


Letters from the Spider-Verse

by Greenygal, Neotoma



Category: Marvel Noir, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexual Relationship, Embedded Images, Epistolary, F/F, F/M, Multi, Polyamory, Spiderverse Big Bang 2019, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-08 16:40:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 27,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20838701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Greenygal/pseuds/Greenygal, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neotoma/pseuds/Neotoma
Summary: Peter Benjamin Parker promised the other Spiders he wouldn't enlist, even though they all know war is coming, even though he's been fighting Nazis since 1933.(now with embedded art!)





	1. TELL ME NOT, SWEET

**Author's Note:**

> Beta by UnicornMister  
Art by StarHost/Congercine and OhStars (art embedded in fic)

[ ](https://imgur.com/leGsq6P)

Mary Jane Watson looked around the cafe. It wasn’t their usual place, but they came here occasionally as it was slightly nicer than the automat. If they kept to the sandwiches, it wouldn’t cost much more than they usually spent.

Peter came through the door, looking just a little flushed, and smiled when he spotted her at the worst table in the joint. She looked at him consideringly. He was good-looking, certainly, finally filled out from the gangliness of his youth, into a handsome, long-legged man. And he’d done well for himself—a physics professor, no less! It had been a pleasant surprise to see when she’d come home from the war in Spain, and during those first few dreadful months after she’d come home, pleasant surprises had been rare and welcome. 

But he looked tired; she’d spent enough coffee dates with him to know he was spread thin. His work at the university was demanding enough, but now there was the war effort as well...and his other job, that he didn’t talk about in cafes. Peter Parker was the strongest person she knew—but then, he’d had to be. _This will help both of us,_ she assured herself. _I hope._

“Hello, Mary,” he rumbled.

“Hello, Peter,” she replied, as he sat across from her.

A waitress came by and got their orders—sandwiches for both of them, with pickles and such, and coffee, of course. All of New York ran on coffee.

“So…” Mary said.

“So,” Peter said, and stirred too much cream into his coffee, until it was as pale as wheat. “What did you want to talk about?”

“I’ve been thinking about what I want out of life. I don’t want to keep living in my father’s house.” She didn’t need to explain why; not to Peter.

Peter pulled the coffee spoon out his mouth and said, “There are a couple of respectable boarding houses for single women over in Yorkville. Aunt May would be happy to be a reference for you.”

She took a deep breath. “I was thinking more that I’d like to get married.”

“Oh?” Peter said, smiling politely. “Anyone I know?”

Mary’s face went flat, her lips a thin line and her eyes narrow. “You cannot possibly be that dense, Peter.”

_What? What did I—oh. Oh!_

“I don’t think I’m very good husband material,” Peter said.

Mary didn’t change her expression, then sighed. “You’d still be a better husband than my father.”

_That is a low bar to clear_, Peter refrained from saying.

“It’s a sensible arrangement,” Mary said. “I need to get out, you’re going to need a wife eventually, and Aunt May should have help around the house. We’ve been friends forever, and marriages have been built on less.” She looked composed and determined; she’d thought about this.

“Give me a minute,” he said, and pushed back from the table. It was…well, it wasn’t the worst proposal he’d ever heard, considering he was evaluating research grants on the regular. 

But it was plainly practical, from Mary, who’d always been an idealist, hoping and working for better things. Practically, he should consider it.

Peter was already politely declining the attempts by colleagues’ wives to fix him up with friends, or worse, students. An engagement, or better yet, a marriage, would put the kibosh on all that. 

Mary moving in, taking over some of the domestic tasks that were getting hard on Aunt May, would be a boon. There was a limit to what May would let Peter do before she kicked up a fuss, but having a niece-in-law might soothe her ruffling feathers. It wasn’t that Peter couldn’t take care of himself—being friends with the other Spiders had cured any learned stupidity, especially when Miles pointedly asked him if he knew how to cook for himself, and then took great delight in teaching him—but it wounded his aunt’s pride that he thought he had to.

And it would get Mary Jane out of her father’s house. He had noticed how she was always happy to come visiting among their circle, and how she quieted when it was time for her to return home. It was more noticeable now, after she’d gone to Spain and come back.

“Mary proposed?” Miguel repeated. “Marriage?! I thought women weren’t supposed to do that for you folks?”

Peter frowned. Miguel didn’t have to make it sound like Peter’s New York was the heart of darkest Africa or something equally baffling and exotic. 

“It’s usually the other way round, but Mary’s a modern girl,” Peter explained. “She can ask me. I don’t mind.”

Miguel’s expressive eyebrows were up to his hairline. “You said yes.”

Peter didn’t think that needed an answer. He wouldn’t be here, telling Miguel first after Aunt May, if he hadn’t.

“So this means...I have no idea what this means, what does this mean?”

“I’m getting married. I’d like you to be there.”

Miguel stared at him, goggle-eyed. 

“It’ll be at the city registrar’s office, so you won’t have to go to a church,” Peter offered their old joke. “Wouldn’t want you to burst into flame…” 

He knew he was in trouble when Miguel just glared. When Miguel didn’t squawk like a chicken about not being a vampire, it meant things were bad. “_Why_ are you getting married?” Miguel asked. 

Peter fiddled with his hat. “Mary’s one of my best friends. We’ve known each other since we were kids, and it makes sense.”

“Peter.”

He was going to break like an egg in the face of Miguel’s stony-eyed frown. He knew he would. “She needs to get away from her folks, and I need someone to look after Aunt May while I’m gone, and yes, it’s not the most romantic reason, but I trust her and I love her and I’ll try my best to make her happy.”

“Peter…”

“I told her, I told her I wasn’t good husband material, but she said I’d be better than her father.” Peter snorted. “That’s not _hard._ A dog in the street is better than a mean drunk.”

“So you’re going to spend the rest of your lives together because it’s not the worst you could do? Terrific. It’ll be a great story to tell your kids.” Miguel paused and frowned. “Is that why you’re doing this? Do you want to have kids?”

“That the only reason people get married, here and now?” People in Miguel’s dimension were a lot looser in their morals, Peter knew, men and women both. They didn’t think having relations before marrying was any kind of problem. In fact, they seemed to think it was an important part of choosing your future husband or wife.

“No, not the only reason, but the biggest one by far is wanting kids. So, do you?”

“Kids generally do show up,” Peter said.

“Only if you’re flarking irresponsible!” Miguel shouted.

Peter sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Miguel, we only have French letters and Dutch caps as birth control, and I didn’t even know about those until Peter B dropped an educational book in my lap and skedaddled.”

Miguel gave him a flat look. “I can get you a contraception shot in sixteen minutes. Assuming, of course, that you’re going to need one. Have you explained _that_ to the lovely Miss Watson? You’re grayer than I am, Peter. I know, because I had to explain to you what all the words meant, and how that meant you weren’t _broken_.”

“I can’t tell her that!” Peter hissed.

Miguel tilted his head.

“I can’t. I can’t say I’m—”

“Grayer than a raincloud and full of cake?”

“—queer,” Peter whispered. “I can’t say I’m queer. I can’t.”

Miguel’s face went funny, and he sat down. On Peter’s lap, with his hands on Peter’s shoulders, staring at Peter with his big red eyes. 

“Mhlobo, you have to be honest with her. She’s one of your best friends, and she’s going to expect things that you can’t give her. Love, yes, you’re good at that. Sex, well, you say you manage with women. Honest desire, though? No, and you know it. And shiny people, people who _aren’t _grey like us, they usually want that.”

Peter pressed his face into Miguel’s neck, and shivered.

“You know, this is not how I imagined getting dumped…” Miguel said after some time had passed.

Peter drew back. “Dumped?” He knew that word, he knew what it meant, here and now, “I’m not—”

“Getting married?” Miguel said brightly, bitterly. He was trying to put a good face on it, but he wasn’t happy. Peter could tell.

“...right,” Peter said. “That.”

“You guys still only have man-woman, only-one-of-each marriages.” Miguel said. “Or do I have my history wrong? It was never my best subject.”

Peter shook his head. “No, that’s right. But...I don’t want to lose you, either.”

“Polycules aren’t exactly my thing, Peter,” Miguel said. Peter had no idea what that word meant, except that maybe that he wouldn’t lose Miguel by marrying Mary. “I have a hard enough time keeping one relationship going.”

“You’ve stepped out, sometimes,” Peter countered. He had, and with Peter’s blessing, because while having sex with women was like dancing without having eyes, having sex with men was like dancing without having _feet_. Peter couldn’t do it, and his attempts with Miguel had been disastrous. At least they’d been funny and disastrous, instead of heartbreaking and disastrous.

“Yeah, I have. Never for long; there aren’t a lot of people who do it for me anyway, and most of the ones who do can’t put up with me for more than a month. You’re kind of unusual that way. I thought, anyway...”

Miguel made to stand, but Peter caught his hand.

“Mhlobo,” he said, “you’re my half, my heart.”

“Mary the other half?” Miguel asked. His face wasn’t so stony anymore.

“I think so, yes.”

“She’s not grey, though.”

“I don’t think so,” Peter admitted. They were part of a rather bohemian set, and there were a few men and women who were quietly queer among them, but Mary was willing to overlook, not out looking for those sorts, he thought.

“You’ve got to tell her—everything, Peter, and I know that’s going to be hard as shock for you. I’ll be there if you want me to, and if she doesn’t throw you out of your ear, or me out on mine, then we’ll sit down, all three of us, and discuss how things will be after you guys get married. That’s what has to happen.”

Peter sighed, and pulled Miguel over to sit beside him.

“I don’t know…”

“Got to start as you mean to go on, mhlobo. I’ve sure shocked more than one relationship because I didn’t. I’m not doing that with you, or letting you do it with a wife.”

Peter pulled Miguel over, forehead to forehead and just breathed along with him. Miguel was right. Of course he was, but telling Mary everything was going to hurt. And there was no guarantee that she wouldn’t throw him away at the end.

“All right,” he agreed. “I’ll figure out how to introduce you…how to tell her.”

Miguel smiled sadly, and kissed him on the corner of his mouth. “Just say the word and I’m there, mhlobo.”

Mary looked at the little glass sculpture Peter kept in the window. It was blocky and amateurish, but it was a flower made of stained glass, and when the light hit it just right it painted the walls with all the tints in the spectrum. She’d thought that was why he kept it, because it was pretty and uncomplicated and Peter needed more of both those in his life.

“It’s a _photovoltaic _cell,” Peter said. “Basically, it captures sunlight and turns it into electricity. Peni gave it to me, to charge the battery of the gizmo.”

Mary looked down at the not-a-watch in her hands. The watchface was slid off to the side now, and she was looking at a tiny screen of glass, where miniscule words floated like an old silent movie’s intertitles. Peter leaned over to tap it, and the tiny words bloomed in the air until they were as big as a book page.

“This is like something out of Buck Rogers,” she murmured.

Peter nodded, and raked his fingers through his hair. “It’s more amazing than that. Jules Verne, or the Lensmen, maybe. Peni’s world is…indescribable.”

“You’ve _been_ there…?”

Peter nodded again, his face going soft. “It's really different there, Mary. It’s just so…itself, and not like here at all. The others, their New Yorks are different—taller, flashier, more expensive—but I can see ours in them. Peni’s New York is amazing. And…well, scary. Gorgeous, but I couldn’t find my way myself, and it’s so weirdly beautiful, it’s like stepping into a dream.”

Mary looked at Peter as he watched the door. They had light sandwiches in front of them, nothing spectacular but definitely wholesome—one of the better selections from the automat’s offerings, especially this late.

Then his face lit up the way it did, crinkles around his eyes and a tilt up at the corner of his mouth.

“Miguel!”

The man who approached was so unbelievably handsome that Mary had to look away to keep from staring. Hair the shade of cherrywood, a face perfect and debonair as a Hollywood idol, with dark glasses completing the effect. His suit was just the slightest bit too flashy, a subtle and adventurous houndstooth, and his hair a bit too long as it curled against his shirt collar.

Mary would have pigeonholed him as one of their fellow bohemians, except there was something subtly off as he greeted Peter. And she had heard Peter’s story of his adventure outside the world they knew.

Light. _Colors. _An alien term for an alien phenomenon. There was a time she would have demanded Peter take her to see those other worlds of wonders. But that was before Spain, before she learned that wonders and horrors were so often the same things. She was so much more cautious now.

...still, it didn't hurt to look.

“Mary Jane?” Peter was looking at her with that reserved concern he had now. 

His friend Miguel smiled, an odd tight thing. He didn’t like to show his teeth, Peter had said; just tell him to repeat himself if he mumbles.

“Pleasure to meet you, miss,” he said, except he said ‘miss’ wrong, too hard and short, more like ‘mix’. He didn’t sound like a Spaniard or a Puertorriqueño. Or an Irishman, either, for all that he had that Irish surname. He just sounded odd, the rhythm of his words just a little out of step with what they should be.

Miguel sat down in the third seat across as Peter hurried off with a word about getting more sandwiches and coffee.

“No money?” Mary asked. Most people could usually bum up a dime for an automat sandwich.

“None that’s good here,” Miguel shrugged apologetically. “We don’t use coinage where I’m from.”

Mary tried to imagine that. A world without coins. How would you pay for a loaf of bread or a crate of apples without dimes and nickels? Paying with whole dollars and not getting any change back? Did they run accounts, and you only settled up when you bought a dollar’s worth of goods? Running tabs everywhere would be mighty inconvenient, even if they had an account with the grocer.

Mary looked up, to see Miguel looking at her with consideration in his eyes. He leaned forward, as if sharing a confidence.

“Peter still thinks he can make a better world,” Miguel said in a soft, brittle tone. “If he just convinces the right people, or punches the right ones…”

“I used to think that,” Mary said, and it felt like one more failure, admitting that loss. “That I could change the world if I just tried hard enough. If I threw myself into the fight with enough conviction.”

Miguel O’Hara looked at her sharply, and then sighed. “I never really did, but I wasn’t going to let them win without a fight. I even manage to win, sometimes, in spite of the odds are against me.”

Mary frowned at that, and was about to ask what he meant, who _he_ was fighting in his shining World of Tomorrow, when Peter returned with more sandwiches and piping fresh coffee.

“Oh, yum,” Miguel said as he wrapped his hands around the cup, seeming content to just wallow in the scent of it.

Peter rolled his eyes and smiled, tight and small, at that. Mary stifled a giggle.

“Hey, you don’t know how lucky you are to have real coffee, alright,” Miguel said, not opening his eyes as he took a blissful sip.

“Miguel has terrible coffee. I’ve had boiled cabbage that tasted better.”

Miguel snorted, but didn't deny it.

Mary had had worse, in Spain. There had been times, near the end, when...

“That’s a nice houndstooth,” she said. Trying for small talk, diverting herself from that train of thought. Dwelling on the past made her too quiet, worrying Peter.

“What’s houndstooth?” Miguel shot a baffled look over the table as Peter pushed a sandwich over to him. 

“I picked that suit out for him,” Peter murmured. “Miguel dresses in the dark, left to himself.”

Miguel rolled his eyes behind his smoked glasses, Mary was quite sure. “He cares a lot more about my clothes than I do.”

“Appearances are important! You dress like a bindlestiff, given your druthers.”

Mary tried to imagine the sleek, urbane Miguel dressed like a hobo. Maybe he’d make it as a Hollywood version, but she couldn’t see him as one of the men who frequented the welfare center, ragged coats and ragged souls.

“I have something to tell you,” Peter said, once they were all settled back at the empty house. “There are things you need to know before we get married. Things I should have told you before I agreed.”

_Oh, mierda, am I going to have to keep living with my father?_ It was a first and unworthy thought, and she squashed it. _Hear him out._

Peter looked to Miguel, for reassurance, and Miguel nodded at him, like he was encouraging him to start. 

Mary leaned forward. “What is it? What is the problem?” 

“I’m queer,” Peter said in a very small voice.

Mary looked over to Miguel. _Is he saying—are they—?_

“It’s not exactly what you’re thinking,” Miguel said, as if he’d read her mind. “He means he’s gray, like me. Well, sort of.”

“Explain, because I don’t know what that means.” Temper and uncertainty made her voice sharp; he was being deliberately unhelpful.

“I don’t notice if people are attractive, most of the time. Almost all of the time, to be truthful, It makes my love life pretty different from most people.”

Mary frowned, and then turned to look at Peter.

“‘He’s gray, like me’,” she repeated. “What does that mean, Peter?”

Peter looked ill, but he swallowed and said, “I didn’t know why I didn’t start wanting people when and like everyone else did. I only figured it out myself after I met the other Spiders and started talking to them. Started spending time in their worlds and hearing their terms, the way different times think about things. I thought I was broken, until then.”

“Peter B was kind of appalled at how little sex education you have in this dimension,” Miguel cut in.

Peter glared at him, and Mary turned to stare at the man. “Excuse me?” she snapped.

Miguel leaned forward. “I had a very narrow education, but we at least got to learn the basics of how our bodies work, how not to get pregnant or not get anyone else pregnant, depending. But your people get _nothing._”

Mary was taken aback. Yes, she’d mostly learned about marital relations in Spain, listening to the local women gossiping and commiserating about their husbands. The idea that somewhere children were being taught that in school…was disturbing.

“What are you trying to tell me?”

Peter’s hand pressed against hers, and he looked her in the eyes. “I’m not attracted to you, Mary—no, shhh—I’m not attracted to anyone. It’s not anything wrong _with you_. That’s all my problem. But I still love you, and I want to marry you. But you have to be okay with this thing about _me_, because I don’t think it will work out otherwise.”

Mary looked at him, and then at Miguel. “Where does he come in?” Because somehow, the other man was involved. Peter wouldn’t have him here otherwise.

“Ah,” Peter said stupidly.

“We’ve been partners for five years,” Miguel said, sharp and oddly brittle. “A—guess you’d call it—‘passionate friendship’.”

Mary raised her eyebrows at him.

“That means all the romance, but none of the sex,” he said.

“Miguel…” Peter groaned.

“She asked.”

“Stop helping.”

“So if Peter and I get married,” Mary said. “You’ll be… what? A mistress?”

Miguel’s face went through a whole series of contortions, until he spat, “No. Never.”

“Well…” Peter said.

“The word is ‘metamour’,” Miguel snapped, “at least in my world. I’m not your lover, you’re not mine, but Peter is both ours.” Peter frowned, like he suddenly realized that he was now joint property and wasn’t sure he liked it.

“All right,” Mary said.

That made both of the men blink.

“All...right?” Miguel asked. Peter looked at her searchingly. They both looked so befuddled.

“It’s a better situation than my father’s philandering,” Mary explained. She turned to Peter, “You’re not going to bring home any social disease, he’s not going to either—” 

MIguel mouthed ‘_social disease?’_ with a frown.

“— and I will be happy with that.”

Peter looked at her, and asked, “Really?”

“Yes.” Mary was sure she would be. Peter was already a better husband than her father had ever attempted.

“Mary,” he purred, and pulled her close. Mary let him envelope her in a hug, and then, realizing, looked out of Peter’s arms to see Miguel looking lost.

“Come here, Miguel,” she said, and pulled him into the hug when he cautiously stepped close. 

She was going to make this work, come hell or high water.

“Peter, what are you doing?” Mary yelped as Peter abruptly steered them into an alley. Mary didn’t want to go—her arms were full of the deli order that he had insisted on, and that alley looked dank.

“I told you,” Peter said, pulling down a fire escape ladder with a jump that would make an Olympic athlete jealous. “My friends want to throw us a party.”

They’d gone out to lunch at a white tablecloth place after the courthouse ceremony with Aunt May, some of Peter’s coworkers from the university and their wives, and some of the office girls from the radio station. Mary had dropped a letter to her parents in a post box with satisfaction. If it arrived tomorrow, maybe then her parents would notice her empty closet and missing suitcase.

Peter got her up on the roof, but it was just a roof, tar paper and pigeon droppings as far as the eye could see.

“Hold on, and don’t drop that basket,” he said and picked her up.

Then he ran off the roof.

Mary barely had time to shriek before they landed on the next roof over. “Don’t worry, it’s only a couple more blocks!” Peter said cheerfully and not at all reassuringly as he ran for the opposite edge of the building roof.

He set her down on her feet on a roof that didn’t seem any different than any other. “Here we are!”

She rounded on him. “Peter Benjamin Parker, _ask_ next time you want to do that!”

Peter’s eyes went wide at her anger. Mary was glad of it, but then there was rollicking laughter from behind them, some voices loud in glee. She turned to see several people on the roof with them, laughing and chortling, and another two holding it in with bitten-lipped smiles. 

“Hello, Peter. Mary,” Miguel greeted them. He’d changed out of the smart suit he’d worn at the courthouse for their wedding this morning, into coarse workman’s trousers and a light knitted shirt. He looked more comfortable, dressed down like a man about to work on his roses.

The young man with the cloud of hair must be Miles, and the women would be Gwen and Peni, though Mary wasn’t sure which was which. The pig (a _cartoon pig_, standing right there on the rooftop, real as anything!) was nicknamed Ham, which left the man with whitened temples as Peter B. He looked eerily like Peter, just older and a bit shorter, with darker eyes and a loose, open stance.

“Hello, Miguel,” Mary managed. He was the only one she’d actually been introduced to, after all, though Peter had talked about them all. They were still finding their way around each other, but he had stood beside Peter at the wedding.

“Congratulations!” someone shouted, and that must have been the cue they’d been waiting for, as a shower of white hit Mary and Peter. Rice? No, cut paper, and noisemakers—that had better not be Peter’s grogger! He had so few things left from his parents…no, that thing in Peter B’s hand must be his own.

“Alright, alright,” Peter waved his friends off from their fun. They’d be picking out paper bits from their hair and clothes all night, but watching the other Spiders' smiles as they crowded forward to introduce themselves, Mary didn't mind at all. Gwen turned out to be the blonde with thoughtful eyes and a dancer’s walk, and Peni the shorter girl with a cheerful smile and shade-streaked hair. 

“C’mon,” Miles said. “We brought cake!”

“And music!” Gwen waved…a pane of dark glass? Except she touched it, and it glowed with its own light, and music filled the air. “We can dance!”

The music was better than a radio, not a scratch or a skip, and it was Glen Miller. Mary gave Peter an inquiring look, and he laughed, and swung her into his arms while his friends whooped and hollered. Then Gwen pulled Miles alongside, and soon everyone was dancing, filling the roof with leaps and whirls and laughter, while music poured from a pane of glass.

Later, sitting on the leg of Peni’s spider machine as a makeshift bench, a paper plate full of the strangest, most delicate cake she’d ever tasted, she realized, _I’m married. Peter’s my family now, and I’m his._

And she didn’t cry, but she had to swallow hard a couple times.

She watched Peter among the others, guiding Gwen, Peni, and Miles through a jitterbug pattern while Peter B kibbitzed with Miguel and Ham, like they were a trio of old men on a stoop, and smiled to herself. There was a lot more family than she’d expected, that was all.

Peter was startled to find Peni sitting on his stoop when he came home, awkward in a summer dress. She wore it like it was made of paper and would tear apart if she breathed wrong.

“Peni?”

“Hi, Peter.”

“What are you doing here?” he asked, ushering her into the front room. Aunt May probably wouldn’t be back for hours yet, not until after the 8 pm soup line was closed, but there were beans soaking in a pot and some corned beef in the icebox. He’d make his own supper.

And maybe feed Peni while she explained why she was here unexpectedly.

Peni placed a heavy parcel, wrapped in something that probably only looked like sack paper, on the table. “I brought you this.”

“This?”

“Open it," she said impatiently, and he did.

It was a portable typewriter, glossy black and unremarkable, except for the flowers stenciled delicately around the sides, and the unfamiliar switches down at the base, almost hidden among the feet.

“Thanks, Pen, but I already have a typewriter. I don’t really need another.”

“It’s not just a typewriter. It’s…let me show you. I need a sheet of paper.”

Peter fetched a sheet and watched as she fed it through the rollers, slightly crooked. She snapped the platen tight, pushed a button on the side until it clicked tight, then pulled her gizmo out of her dress pocket.

She ran her fingers over the gizmo’s face, with the quick assured movements Peter had seen countless times before. She tapped once, and he felt the slight vibration on his wrist of his gizmo receiving a message.

Then the typewriter began to clatter, typing out HELLO PETER.

“You made a teletype?!” Peter exclaimed, baffled but intrigued. His gizmo was disguised as a heavy and battered wristwatch, but this was new.

“Is that what you call it? I made it so you can take it with you; it’ll hold the messages until you have the time to respond. I thought the typing might be less conspicuous than your gizmo, but it accesses the same network, and you can get your messages either way. You just need to leave it in a sunny window for a few hours every day to keep it charged.”

“Aw, Peni,” he said, and pulled her close for a hug. She came to his shoulder now, instead of small enough to carry pick-a-back, but still the brilliant girl who’d machined their way out of danger all those years ago.

“Thank you,” he said into her sleek black hair, “but I can’t take it.”

“Peter!”

“No, I can’t. I’m not going to have much privacy, Peni, and if someone really looks, is it going to look like a typewriter? I can see the switches from here, and those are queer enough that someone might tear this open to see inside, and then where would I be?”

Peni’s frown turned bleak. “You won’t take anything, will you?”

Peter hated to disappoint her, but—he shook his head.

“I just want to know you’re alive!” she said, and jumped to hug him.

Peter wrapped his arms around her, his chin against her temple—she’d grown up over the years, but not very much.

“I’ll send letters,” he promised. “We’ll figure out a way for you to get them. And you can write me, and Mary will help you post them.”

“It’s not going to be enough,” Peni sniffled.

He smoothed her hair. He wanted to make this better for her, wanted to tell her everything would be all right, but he couldn’t, not this time. “It'll have to be.”


	2. TO THE WAR IS GONE

Dear Mary,

I’ve arrived in England finally. The crossing was more uncomfortable than you warned me. There was nothing to do except make small talk with fellow passengers, read, stare out at the ocean, and worry. I don’t like worrying when I can’t do anything; I heat up with nowhere to let the steam out, like a dangerous boiler.

The other passengers were various businessmen traveling for work, a few shifty types who are probably going to be revealed to be government diplomats, a divorcée who is retrieving her children, and several doctors returning home to Denmark with a shipment of medical supplies.

We were flying a Danish flag, but no one was sure if the Kriegsmarine would respect that, especially when we turned towards England. The last few days had us all squirrelly, even the crew.

Agent Carter is sorting out my ration books, now that I’m here for the duration, but I have to say eating at the national restaurants for a week seems fine by me. The price is fixed and the meat is limited, but the cooks know how to make the endless supply of rutabagas and carrots into something enjoyable.

Still, I look forward to anything you can send me from home. There’s no grape jelly here—I tried some that looked the right shade, and it was currants! They taste queer, all tartness and bite, you wonder why rich people like them! There’s no peanuts neither; I wasn’t expecting brittle—there wouldn’t be, the rationing is awful tight on sugar—but if you can’t make a peanut butter sandwich for yourself, potato sandwiches—yes, that’s what half the men bring for lunch!—are a disappointing alternative.

I’m at the Carstairs Hotel for the moment, but I’ll find something more permanent soon. There must be some place a nice American boy can board for a reasonable weekly sum. I’ll let you know my new address as soon as I find a room.

Yours,

Peter

[](https://imgur.com/Ci8MXq1)

To B, Miles, Gwendolyn, Peni, and Miguel,

I have landed on my feet in [REDACTED] and have impressed my superiors with my work. I’m going to be sent to [REDACTED] soon. It’s closer to [REDACTED].

Love you all, Peter

Dear Pete,

Just letting you know that Mayday’s softball team has closed out their season as district champions. I’m not sure how I managed to raise a tiny athlete, but she says she wants to try basketball next. I’m looking forward to being volunteered to be an assistant coach for that, despite my lack of any athletic skills whatsoever. At least I can keep track of the equipment.

The job is going along like it always does—not too much trouble, and if there’s something I can’t handle, I have our team to fall back on, plus the local guys here. If Gwen sends you anything complaining, she’s exaggerating. I can handle one lizard easily.

Oh, and MJ got a new gig doing voices for a show. It’s got princesses, fairies, dragons, knights in shining armor, things like that, and she’s going to be playing the wise older lady who gives out quests and wraps up the moral of the story in small words for the adults, so she’s on a three-year contract. Mayday is over the moon and bragging about her mom to her friends, which is making MJ feel appreciated.

Love,

B

PS Mayday’s added her own letter.

[ ](https://imgur.com/JrHf8By)

Dear Uncle Noir,

Daddy said you’re in Britain now, and that’s why you didn’t come visit when my team won the softball tournament. That’s okay, I know it takes long for you to travel because you don’t have airplanes to fly in.

We planted a garden at school this year and I get to go every week and work on it this summer. We’re going to learn how to preserve food in class, as part of Healthy Living; I’ll send you some pickled onions, because Daddy says that they don’t even have onions where you are.

Love,

May Parker (8 ½—my birthday is soon! Send me something British, please?)

[ ](https://imgur.com/9cA4OoW)

Dear Peter,

B has broken his arm, but he's doing fine except for all the complaining; I'm sure you can imagine. The others and I have taken over his chores; yesterday there was some excitement when a lizard had to be chased out of the kitchen.

—Gwen

Peter completed typing up his analysis. The snap of the paper coming free as he pulled the page was the sound of satisfaction.

“Agent Parker,” one of the office girls said as she came by to retrieve his report, “Senior Agent Carter wishes to see you, in her office.”

Peter looked across the bullpen—half a dozen male analysts salted among the office girls and female analysts for lack of anywhere else to put them—to the paired offices. Agent Carter was in hers, the one she had because she was privy to the highest secrets this analysis office would get, and when she wasn’t in the field, she was their gatekeeper.

He crossed the length of the room, rapped on the door and waited.

“Agent Parker,” Agent Carter said, crisp and correct as an Army Manual. “I am sending you to retrieve some of my lost lambs.”

Peter raised his eyebrows at that. The analysts were “my specialists” or “my workers” or occasionally “you idiots who pretend you’re grown men!” “Lost lambs” he hadn’t heard before.

“...Where have your sheep gotten to, ma’am?”

She smiled like a tiger and slid a file folder over to him. He opened it, reading the teletype pages quickly.

“Hastings?…As in ‘Battle of’?”

“It’s a seaside resort town. Captain Rogers and his men were there for their mandated rest and recuperation leave.”

“—And got rowdy. You want me to fish them out of the hoosegow.”

“Shadefully put. Yes. You’ve a ticket and a warrant card, so you can refer any objections by the local authorities to me. I want a receipt on each man—“

“As you’ll be taking the fines out of their hides? Yes, ma’am.”

Agent Carter saw him to the door, and once he retrieved his notebook, his hat, and his overcoat—England was both cold and damp, and Peter’s American-made suit wasn’t quite as warm as the tweeds the locals lived in—he was off to catch the train. Hopefully he’d be back in the city by tomorrow.

There was a direct train to Hastings, as it turned out, and Peter’s ticket had been issued for it. That meant he was stuck into one of the few passenger cars on a freight train going to Hastings to collect war material from the port. There were several soldiers going on their home visits and an entire unit of untried boys who were probably being shunted to a sleepy seaside town to knock their puppyness off.

There was also a knot of civilians who were eyeing him with disdain. Peter didn’t even sigh; either one of them would confront him—he’d heard enough white feather lectures in his time—or they wouldn’t. It was always bitterly amusing to see their faces when he opened his mouth and his Bowery accent poured out. Sometimes he didn’t even get called a gangster.

Steve had been dubious when the man in the civilian suit had walked into the police station and started paying off the fines to get the Howlies out of trouble. Even the familiarity of a Bowery accent, rough and drawling, hadn’t sold him on Agent Parker.

It wasn’t exactly the man’s build, or closed off manner of holding himself, or his sometimes dramatic flourishes with his hands. Steve had seen all variations on those back home, and knew that a man’s character wasn’t necessarily reflected in his mannerisms.

It might have been the suit, all in all. A man of fighting age not in uniform, but in England anyway, with no obvious defect to render him 4F, it just seemed wrong.

But Parker had been polite, firm, and unrattled by the Howlies on their less than company manners. Steve knew he was judging without actually considering the evidence, and that was his own failure.

So when Steve visited Peggy at the SSR office the morning Parker got them all back to London, he took a moment to consider the man dedicatedly scribbling at his work in the middle of a loud bullpen.

He’d written in a notebook on the train back, too. Reporter’s shorthand, he’d explained when Steve had glanced over and saw only squiggles covering the pages.

“What do you think of Agent Parker?” Peggy said as she walked him out of the SSR offices.

“Even-keeled, good with bureaucracy, didn’t get in a lather with the men’s antics.” Steve looked at her sideways. That was a fair assessment of what he’d seen, he thought.. “You have plans?”

“I’ve been tasked to select a few of the analysts to come with, the ones who will be able to handle France and make good analyses under pressure.”

“Behind the lines?” Steve tried to imagine the quiet, intense man he’d met yesterday working in a division headquarters.

“On the lines,” she said, “or very near. You saw those Hydra weapons. We won’t be able to wait for examples to be sent back to London for analysis, once we’re in full swing.”

“How’s his training record?” Steve asked. He had only met the man yesterday. That was hardly any time at all, and he hadn’t yet seen the man’s jacket.

“Not top marks, but good, solid abilities nonetheless. Competent with small arms, adequate at hand-to-hand, excellent at looking innocent and gathering information—unsurprising; he worked his way through university as a news reporter—extremely good at deciphering, and a dab hand at forging documentation." Steve raised an eyebrow at that last; Peggy shrugged. "Nothing criminal in his records, so wherever he learned it isn’t officially my concern. If he weren’t draft age," she added, "he’d have made an excellent agent for behind the lines work.”

Steve heard the unspoken thought: but being hale, hearty, and male, he’d stand out for not being in uniform or in a work brigade, just as he’d stood out to Steve.

“I have no objection to the man. He got along with the men on the train back to base, which is enough to work with.”

“Excellent,” Peggy said. “Because one of the other field analysts is going to be Alistair Smythe.”

Steve managed not to groan.

Dear everyone,

I have met Captain America. Why did no one tell me he’s so tall?

Love Peter

Dear Peter, You’re still taller. Love, B

Hey Pete,

Captain America, you say? Swell guy, ask him to help you find a tailor. If he knows someone who can make that stars-and-stripes outfit look good, he knows someone who can deal with your gangly self.

Love,

Ham

[ ](https://imgur.com/ivMIIf9)


	3. OVER THERE

Dear Mary, 

You’ll be glad to know I’m settling in. The work is both more interesting and more tedious than I expected. I spend a lot of my time checking things that wind up being of no importance whatsoever.

I’m not the only American here, but there aren’t that many of us, and most of them are engineers attached to Stark. He’s colorful, just like you’d expect from those stories in the pulps. I’m not too impressed. He’s boisterous and loud and flirts too much with the office girls, who really have more important work to do than listen to his flattery. Agent Carter knows how to deal with him, fortunately. He snaps to when she’s around.

He’s still better than Smythe, though. Smythe took a dislike to me from my first day. I don’t know why; he’s a perfectly competent engineer, and he can look at a piece of machine and figure out how to build a copy. He’s good at his job, and I’m good at mine, and they’re not the same job. But he seems to have it out for me. Mostly it’s needling, taking issue because I didn’t know which fork was which at dinner—why would I? Did we ever have more than one fork at a setting?—and how I cut my meat. It’s childish and annoying, but I suppose sticking his head in a bucket wouldn’t help.

I miss you. There’s movies here, and parks to walk in, though the window-shopping is pretty thin, but it’s not the same without you by my side.

Love,

Peter

PS Please vary the stamps you put on the letters you send. My landlady’s children have already made off with the 11-cent stamps from the previous letters for their stamp collections. I think they might be trading them to other children; American stamps are certainly a novelty here.

PSS Also, the peanut butter was delicious. Send more.

The sheet in the alien typewriter Peter had given Mary before he left (some husbands gave flowers, but Peter had always liked to be different) had a new line that morning: DO YOU WANT TO VISIT? I CAN MAKE LUNCH. MIGUEL 

Mary stared at the typewriter for a moment. Then she carefully pecked out: TOMORROW?

The typewriter did nothing for a moment, then it began to clatter: I’LL COME GET YOU AT 1PM AT HOME. OK?

OK, she responded.

She stepped back from the typewriter and wound up on the bed. What did one wear to a lunch date in a different world? Her closet had her workday dresses and the black-piped suit she’d gotten married in. And a play suit, for summer days at home, when the city closed down and it was too hot to wear real clothes; Peter had said the other worlds were different enough to make him blush, but surely she couldn’t wear that out...could she?

Despite her wicked flash of temptation, Mary was decorously dressed when she met Miguel on the doorstep that night. Miguel, for his part, was wearing the same suit he’d worn when she met him, the slightly flashy houndstooth. Aunt May eyed him like he was a stray dog that might have to be shooed away with a broom.

“No, Aunt May, it’s all right. You remember Miguel. He was at the wedding.”

“Yes, I remember, dear,” Aunt May said, and gave Miguel another sweeping glance. She was definitely thinking of fetching a broom.

“I was expecting him. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

“Where are you going?”

Miguel leaned forward, and grabbed Mary’s hand, pulling her forward to place between himself and Aunt May. “Lunch,” he snapped, and lurched away from the door like he’d been kicked. Mary perforce accompanied him.

“Miguel!”

“She was going to hit me with a stick. Or worse.”

Mary giggled. “She did look like she was thinking about getting a broom to fend you off.”

“Do I look that suspicious?” he whined, looking down at his clothes. “Peter picked them out.”

_I bet he did_, Mary thought, biting back a laugh.

Miguel clearly caught it. "All right, out with it," he said resignedly. "What am I getting wrong?"

"It's nothing bad; your clothes are very flattering. You look very...decorative?"

Miguel sighed. "So Peter's aunt thinks I'm a gigolo."

"No, probably just a bit shiftless. You know, the careless rich.." From Miguel's expression, that wasn't much of an improvement. "You'd never met her before the wedding?" she asked curiously.

Miguel shrugged. "I wasn't asking for an introduction. There's nothing important that either he or I could have said." He looked at her thoughtfully. “He has to keep a lot of secrets—we all do, but Peter…” He shook his head. “It’s good he can talk to you.”

Mary felt warm all over. 

Miguel’s apartment was enormous for a bachelor’s apartment. They could have the entire first floor of their house inside it, or so it seemed to Mary. It was as glamorous as any apartment from the movies, as if Veronica Lake or Tyrone Powers was going to sit down on the settee and fix her a whiskey. There were even smoked windows to the ceiling, with enormously tall spires dimly visible through the darkened glass; they were miles taller than the Empire State Building, or the Radiator Building. She thought they were plainer, more impressive for their lofty heights than the Art Deco ornaments they would have had at home.

The apartment was also almost entirely without interior walls, which made it a little like sitting in a furniture showroom and then expecting to live your life there.

And it had _colors_! Every surface glowed with some shade she couldn’t even name. She kept wanting to touch them, to see if they were real, even though they obviously were.

There was a small table, like a card table, but more elegant, in a nook by a large open kitchen that would have done justice to a hotel restaurant or mansion. It had a butcher’s block the size of an automat booth in the center, and numerous devices that might have been toasters and percolators, but could have been other kitchen appliances for all she could tell.

There were bags on it, oddly flimsy, with a fancy, loopy script on the side: Russ & Daughters, and she almost choked at the idea of that store existing a world and almost two centuries away.

“We don’t have good coffee here, but I can get you tea, or soda, or fresca, if you want.”

Miguel proceeded to load her a plate with one of everything he had, some of which she could identify, but some of which she could only guess at. 

“The salmon looks lovely. Do you eat a lot of fish?” she asked as she picked up a knife and fork.

“I do. I get paid well enough that I don’t have to eat only alt-meat. I can even afford chapulines and cuy for special occasions,” Miguel said, a reminiscent smile on his face. “I know that’s not what you guys eat at home, but we lost most of our large mammal livestock to a plague decades before my parents were born, and I’m not rich enough to eat birds regularly.”

Mary wasn’t rich enough to eat chicken regularly, herself. She and Peter and Aunt May made do with city chicken—veal dressed as chicken—for Sunday dinners, and whatever meat wasn’t too dear the rest of the week.They were even part of a goose club for Christmas; the leftovers got eaten up or turned into soup for the welfare kitchen before they spoiled.

The salmon was very good, if spicy. The vegetable leaves served with it were tart and lemony, and Miguel had loaded her plate with what turned out to be tiny noodles in the shape of rice and an assortment of dumplings that were trickier to eat than she was used to. Some of them had _soup _inside!

She started as a woman’s voice cut through the air from seemingly nowhere. “Miguel, Gabriel is here. Should I let him in?"

Miguel groaned. “He can sure pick his times.” Glancing at Mary, Miguel added, “That’s Lyla. She’s an artificial intelligence—a mechanical assistant, you'd probably say. Peter calls her a ‘girl Friday’?”

A translucent woman suddenly appeared in the room; Mary nearly dropped her glass. She was dressed in a large coat and stockings, and had novelty sunglasses on her face. “I prefer ‘woman of all work’, Miguel, most of it tedious. Nevertheless, your brother is here.”

Mary heard the click of a door opening in the other room, and a warm voice called, “Miggy? Lyla says you’re home. I gotta talk to you—”

The man who entered looked remarkably like Miguel, a little stockier, a little more coarse in his features, and a little less bright on his colors. He had on plain workman’s denim trousers, a jacket over a knitted shirt, a kerchief around his neck, and what looked like machinist’s safety glasses perched on the top of his head.

“Uhm,” he said as he caught sight of Mary. “A visitor from out of town, Mig?”

“Mary, this is my brother Gabriel,” Miguel said with a long-suffering air. “Gabriel, this is Mary Parker.”

“Parker? Any relation to Tall, Dark, and Monochrome?”

“You’ve met Peter?”

“Several times. He and Miguel do this thing where they flirt by competitive cooking.”

That sounded like Peter. He actually enjoyed cooking, and liked feeding people, most especially her.

“I’m his wife.”

Gabriel froze, his whole face blanking. Then he said “excuse us a moment!” in a rush and dragged a protesting Miguel off by his elbow. Mary, watching in some bemusement, rather thought it would have been by his ear if he resisted more than the little “Hey!” he gave in protest. She glanced at Lyla, wondering if the woman (?) had any idea what that was about.

Lyla just shrugged. “Organics are weird.”

By the time Miguel shook off Gabriel’s arm, they were on the other side of the door.

“Are you out of your _shocking _mind?” Gabriel snarled. “This? _Again?! _You shocking twist! It’s bad enough you did it to me when you were young and _stupid_, but you’re doing it again?!”

“Gabri, it's not like that—”

Gabriel set his feet, squared his shoulders, and clenched his fists.

“It’s not like that! Peter told Mary everything _before _they got married!”

That brought Gabriel up short. “What?”

“Peter told Mary about us! Before. The. Wedding.”

“Is this some kind of weird v-relationship you guys are carrying on?”

Miguel’s mouth snapped shut. He hunched his shoulders. “Kind of? I don’t know. We’re kind of freestyling it.”

“You’re _kind of_ in a v-relationship with two people from an _alternate _dimension?” Gabriel asked, his eyebrows rising up to his goggles. “Only you, Miggy.”

Miguel relaxed. It didn’t look like Gabriel was going to throw a punch any time soon. It would have been embarrassing to have cut lunch short with Mary in order to take Gabriel to a doc for a broken hand.

“Do you want to meet Mary without being a bithead?”

Gabriel looked at the door. “Yeah, I want to meet a woman who can put up with you and the Melodramatic Man.”

Miguel’s brother turned out to be charming, in a scruffy way. Mary didn’t quite understand what he did, but it sounded a bit like being a foley artist and a bit like being a scenery painter. It was definitely something in the arts, but in the behind-the-scenes crew area, not anything in front of an audience.

He chattered in the same odd accent Miguel had, not too fast or slow, but in an entirely different rhythm than the English she was used to.

“So,” Miguel said after his brother had left—with several pastries. “I guess you want to know why Gabriel dragged me out of here?”

“You don’t have to tell me. Family business, and all.”

Miguel looked relieved for a moment, but then shook his head. “This is actually pretty terrible. I was a terrible person for a while, before I was Spider-Man.”

“When I was 24, I went on a double date with Gabriel because he wanted me to meet his new girlfriend…” Miguel began. He didn’t seem to want to go on, even when Mary nodded encouragingly at him.

Miguel sighed. “I was dating a woman named Xina at the time. We’d been at school together—I went to a boarding school out in Westchester that was for kids of company executives; it was a serious stem education—“ 

Mary nodded, but had no idea what “stem” meant. Local slang, probably that it was a prestigious school? Was it like Peter getting into Princeton for his doctorate? Scholarship boy makes good?

“When Dana—Gabriel’s girlfriend at the time—walked in. I kind of lost it?”

“You disliked her that much?”

Miguel’s skin turned bright colors. Was that what _blushing_ looked like here?! It was amazing!

“No, that was the problem. I’d never been attracted to anyone like that before. I’d never been attracted to anyone, full stop, which was a revelation and led to me acting terrible. I laid on the charm, and Dana threw Gabriel over for me…”

“You stepped out on your girl _and_ stole your brother’s girl at the same time?” Mary asked, wanting confirmation that she’d heard that right.

Miguel nodded miserably.

“And now your brother thinks...what? That you’re trying to steal me from Peter?”

“Yes, that’s what he thought, or maybe that I was stealing Peter from you…? I don’t know?”

Mary looked at his miserable, flushed face, and tried not to laugh. She really did.

She didn’t succeed, but she tried.

Peter was a dear and an idiot, and a very unconventional husband, but she’d have to put him out like a cat before he’d stray. He was quite happy to sleep in her bed and eat her uninspired sandwiches—and he liked to cook for her, when he had time! Soup and drop cookies and dump cakes, iced enthusiastically but amateurishly. They even had a garden plot in the alley for tomatoes, raked out of the muck.

The idea that anyone could steal her from him was ridiculous. His confession before their marriage hadn’t meant disaster after all. They weren’t the stuff of high drama before or after their wedding, but she could jog along quite happily with him for the rest of her life. 

“You don’t have to find it _quite_ so funny, Mary,” Miguel said after a bit, while she was still giggling.

Peter,

I’ve gotten into the juried show I told you about in my last letter. They accepted the memorial mural, some of my abstract pieces, and that ink-wash I did of you with the cats.

So thanks for being my most reliable model. If I win anything, you’ll be the first I write to. Getting an art grant would go a long way towards reassuring my dad that I’m not going to be living at home when I’m 40 or squatting in some derelict warehouse.

Miles

[ ](https://imgur.com/FczKeDh)


	4. THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN

Dear B,

I’m in France now. I don’t know if you’ve ever been, but even so, it’s much changed from what everyone tells me who’d be in a position to know what it was like before. The Vichy regime kowtowed to the Nazis, and there’s so much loss here. Half the men are gone it seems, conscripted as labor to free up the German men for soldiers, or worse.

Everywhere we go, the francisca is up, with the ‘Travail, Famille, Patrie’, at least until the Allied Armies arrive, and then it’s torn down and up goes ‘Liberté, égalité, fraternité’ and the Cross of Lorraine that the Free French use. I can’t blame the locals too much. They have to keep their heads down, no matter how the wind is blowing; standing against the Nazis is admirable, but it’s a little much to ask old men and farmwives, especially when they have little ones. Better to endure, and give cover to the younger men and women who can fight.

I know, I’m getting soft now that I’m almost thirty. I guess I can’t be angry as I was as a youth. It’s just too hard, and too heart-breaking. I work on [REDACTED REDACTED] but it’s disgusting what happened. 

So far, it’s been bad, but I really fear it will get worse the further we go east. Here, the Germans were mostly showing their polite faces, because they thought the French were like them and would bolster them if they put on their manners. East, in Poland, Greece, and beyond, they thought those nations were less than, and treated them as such. 

I wish I could talk to you, instead of just write letters. You were always a voice of experience, even when I was angry at the world and didn’t want to listen to anyone.

Love,

Peter

PS write back and tell me how Mayday is doing. I need to think of better things.

All Steve could hear was terrified screaming and enraged bellowing. Screaming in German and bellowing in Yiddish.

He burst through the doors and into the big entrance room with its ridiculous winding staircase. There was a man stuck to the wall askew, like a painting hung crooked. There were a few more slumped over broken furniture—a shattered hatstand and a cracked chest of drawers.

And there was a man dangling in midair above them, held in Parker’s iron grip as the scientist crouched impossibly sideways on the stair's bannister railing.

“You think you can come here, into _my lab_ and hurt _my people_?!” he yelled, shaking the man like a terrier with a rat.

“Parker!” Peggy’s yell cut through Parker’s rage and he abruptly straightened. That looked bizarre, as he was left standing on the railing, perpendicular to the floor.

He dropped the German; the man fell with a terrified yelp and flailed backwards after he landed to fetch up on Jones’s boots. Jones managed a sarcastic “there there” at the incongruous fact of a German commando turning to him for comfort.

“Parker, are you injured?” Peggy questioned, just as if her scientist wasn’t standing sideways on the fancy balustrade. Steve was finding it almighty distracting, himself.

But Parker did look alarming; he was splattered with blood, all down one arm and up his face. He’d lost his spectacles somewhere, but the circles of their lenses was the only part of his face not covered in gore.

He frowned at Peggy, as if her question made no sense. Steve wondered if he’d lost it to adrenaline.

“It’s not my blood. Mostly,” Parker answered. “Dr Smythe and Sgt Koj are down, maybe others. I got most of the team to the roof, but not everyone.”

“Medics!” Steve heard Bucky yell behind him.

“Parker,” Steve said. “Lead the way and give us a report.”

Parker watched warily as Steve and Peggy started up the stairs. Before they cleared the landing, he seemed to relax and flipped himself over the railing in a motion worthy of a big top aerialist.

The trail of destruction going out was obvious. Going in, less so; traces of the Hydra commandos having been obliterated by Parker. Steve directed men of the squad following to investigate, and heard noises of dismay or concern as they did.

The butcher’s bill was going to be horrific.

An enemy commando squad had slipped through the lines, sent to kill and capture their scientific analysts, and Parker had gone through them like an enraged locomotive. Parker, always too timid and gentle in hand to hand training, always going for blocks and throws that redirected or flipped his training partner but never following through on a solid hit.

Possibly because he didn’t want to punch through any of the Howlies, judging by the corpse at the turn of the upper corridor. There was another body stuck high on the wall, thrown out of the way and glued in place with sooty black string. That one was breathing.

In the lab itself, there was a man thrown over a desk and impaled on a spindle, two more men slumped, one was obviously dead from a broken neck, but the other had been taken out of the fight by the ruthless efficiency of two snapped arms. When Steve turned him over, he had the dead froth-mouthed face of Hydra, suiciding before giving up any secrets. Bad, but they rarely captured Hydra alive.

In the rear of the lab, the garret space with the roof access was covered with more of that black...no, not string, he realized. Webbing. A suspicion started to rise in Steve’s mind, and he looked sideways at Parker. Parker was ignoring everyone, standing tucked away near the bench top he used to pull apart Hydra machinery for analysis. He was ramrod stiff, hands clasped around his elbows as if he was holding himself together.

The debriefing was going to be _interesting._

They sat in the old servant’s parlor. It was large, passingly comfortable, and had limited exits. Peter was reasonably sure that there were Howlies posted on the other sides of those doors with orders to stop anyone who came through without Steve Rogers’ authorization.

There were certainly guards on the door they went through—a squad of six. Peter heard Captain Rogers’ murmured instructions to stop him if he came out alone—lethally if need be.

Well, wasn’t that delightful.

He had a fresh uniform and had washed off most of the blood, but there was no hiding his secrets now. Hadn’t been, probably, from the moment his spider sense had gone from ever-present dread to spiking panic. He’d kept everything together long enough to herd the half of the lab he could find easily up towards the roof access—at least there was an escape route from there—but then the popping sounds started.

He knew the sound of suppressed guns. He’d spent seven years kicking in the teeth of gangsters and Bund thugs. It was a sound that lived in his dreams. He’d been out of the lab and heading for that sound before he’d even thought about it.

He hadn’t gone wild until he saw Sgt Koj, though. She’d pried Smythe and Breasoielu out of their cubbyhole to evacuate and they’d gotten caught by more commandos coming up one of the service staircases; by the time Peter’d gotten there it was too late. Peter remembered webbing one of the Germans out of the stairwell and into a wall, and kicking the other one down it. The staircase spiraled, so maybe that one had survived to be captured; he'd heard the other one's neck snap.

After that, things got fuzzy. He’d been crystal clear at the time, in that flow of knowing a punch was going to land, a kick was going to incapacitate, but that was gone now. It hadn’t even been anything but a series of strikes, full force, full speed, get them down and done.

He wondered if Peter B would be proud of him, or appalled. The older Spider didn’t like killing, not at all, but he lived in a gentler world. 

His spider sense had quieted, now, but that just meant nobody was looking to shoot him. He could snake through a transom and be gone as soon as he hit the tree line, but he controlled the thought. He'd come this far, and even if he'd shown his hand after all that work to hide it, he wasn't ready to throw in his cards quite yet.

Carter sat opposite him at the long table, Rogers and Jones flanking her.

“All right, Parker,” she began. “Explain yourself.”

“I killed twelve Nazi commandos, saved almost the entire research team, and blew my secret to do it.” He felt the immature glower settle over his features; he didn’t like that feeling, that resentment, but he was seething with it, too het up from the fight still.

“‘Your secret’,” Jones said, “being your preternatural abilities?”

“Yeah. Those."

“The wall-walking, the strength, the webs,” Captain Rogers said. “You're the Spider of New York.”

Carter turned to look at Rogers with a confused look. “What?”

“That’s a radio show,” Jones protested. “For kids. It’s cheesy.”

“I hate that thing,” Peter groaned. “It’s pure bunkum.”

That made them all look at him with identical stares.

“It is. I’ve never even been to the Orient. I didn’t get my powers by secret mystical meditation techniques. And I’m not the chosen one of the Ancient Order of the Spider's Fang, or whatever it was. I’m just a guy from the Lower East Side."

"But you are the Spider," Captain Rogers said. To Agent Carter, he explained, “This guy took on the Goblin and the Crimemaster back in 1933–they were notorious gangsters who were running the city, all of the seamy underside.”

“You’re not that old,” Jones said in surprise, “You couldn’t have been more than eighteen when you started.”

“Seventeen,” Peter admitted.

“You neglected to mention these abilities when you joined the SSR,” Carter said dryly. “It could have helped with Project Rebirth.”

Peter shook his head. “And you could have gotten me thrown down a deep dark hole. The Spider is wanted by everyone, from the FBI to the park police. I was a _vigilante_.”

“And a folk hero, apparently,” Carter said, with a sidelong look at Rogers. Peter thought he saw a flicker of amusement in her eyes, but there was no sign of it when she spoke. "What _is_ the source of your abilities? Is it reproducible?”

“It was a god, a Spider the size of the sky, made out of people. Parts of people,” Peter said. As wide as the sky, against a starry void, and Peter had been enmeshed in its web, naked before those lidless eyes. He shook his head, trying to clear the memory. Breathing himself into a panic wouldn’t help now. “Or if you want, it was the worst hallucination anyone’s ever had. Either way, everyone else the spiders bit died screaming, so no, I don’t think it’s a reproducible effect.”

“That’s not helpful,” Carter said.

Peter shrugged. “I’m not up to taking on a God, ma’am. Especially not that one.”

Afterwards, Captain Rogers insisted that Peter show him how he could actually fight, instead of the gentle sparring Peter had been demonstrating for the Howlies during the mandatory training. Given that Peter had been using only deflects and blocks, that was fair. He’d had even Carter thinking he was a mediocre hand-to-hand combatant; now that they knew he was the Spider, he might as well show them what that really meant.

Crossing to the copse of trees opposite the manor house, Peter realized that Rogers was going to keep this out of sight of the main of the unit. Only a chosen few would see Peter in full fettle. Maybe to keep it out of the gossip rounds, or maybe just so that Peter didn’t feel quite so much like a show pony.

“‘The Spider, chosen one of the Ancient Order of the Spider's Fang, hero who walks in the shadows…’” Barnes intoned in an imitation of the narrator’s plummy introductory speech as they walked up to the small crowd. It was Rogers’ own personal team, Barnes, Dugan, and the rest.

“I hate that show,” Peter said as lightly as he could manage. It was not time to go on a tirade—the show was ridiculous, he was not a practitioner of the mystics arts of the mysterious Orient, or whatever bunkum the scriptwriters had come up with—at least they’d stopped having their Spider spout anti Semitic and race-baiting trash after Peter had made a late night visit to the writers room. B hadn’t even told him off for that; he had been almost as disgusted as Peter.

“You got to admit, Doc, this is a surprise,” Dugan chortled.

“Get it all out. You’ve got two minutes for Spider jokes,” Peter said, “and then I kick your asses.”

The Howlies laughed, almost to a man, and started making terrible, gruesome Spider jokes.

Peter timed them on his watch. “Your two minutes are up,” he said, and picked up a rock about the size of his head. He gripped carefully and twisted. The crack as it snapped in two was flat and stark as a gunshot.

The Howlies abruptly sobered, all their laughter gone in an instant. Morita looked thoughtful, and said, “You’ve been holding out on us.”

“I have,” Peter agreed. “You’re all very breakable.”

“Cap goes first,” Morita declared.

That made Peter bark out a laugh. “Sure.”

Steve stared up at the sky, flat on his back for the third time in five minutes. This was not going well.

Parker leaned into his vision. “You’re not in practice fighting people at your level.”

“There _aren’t_ any people at my level!” Steve groaned.

Parker raised his eyebrows. “Please to meet you, Captain America. I’m the Spider.”

Steve nodded and took the hand Parker offered. He climbed to his feet and dusted off the bracken and dirt. 

“In real combat," he felt compelled to point out, "I’d be trying to shoot you.”

Parker nodded. “Yeah, that’s happened.”

“How do you train for that?” Steve asked. “We had live-fire exercises in boot...”

“Well, I generally just got shot at by gangsters and learned to duck most of the time.”

“And when you didn’t?” 

“I’m tougher than I look and I heal fast.”

Steve considered. “We need to get you working with the Howlies. You need practice working with the unit, and you need practice moving through forest and bracken.”

Parker raised an eyebrow.

“You’re definitely coming with us from now on,” Steve said firmly. “I need a forward analyst, and you’ve got all of the qualifications. And then some.”

Parker sighed. “I am never going to hear the end of this.”

Dear Peter,

I caught you on the newsreel. Captain America was on the screen, and there you were in the back, drawing on a map on a jeep. That is not ‘safe in England’, buster.

Explain yourself.

Mary

[ ](https://imgur.com/Dwob401)


	5. A TRIP THROUGH THE TULIPS

Agent Carter:

Have reached objective HIVE with aid of WASP. Will proceed to FLOWERBED and secure PRIMROSE. Possibly TULIPS.

Agent Parker

Peter shifted on the roof and bit back a growl. These crazy shingles were driving him crazy, so loose and unreliable. Give him a flat tar-paper roof any day.

“Parker, what do you see?”

“Nothing, nothing good.” They’d been hiding on the roof of the highest building they could risk, and hoping the SiPo missed them. Partly because Peter had run through town in a highly noticeable way before going up a wall and doubling back. That false trail had the Nazi police busy as a kicked-over anthill, so that was something anyway.

Agent Carter looked worn, and Van Dyne had curled up like a sick cat. Peter knew he probably looked like he’d been pulled backwards through a hedge. They could all use some rest, but they weren’t going to get anywhere until they were out of here.

There was a clear view out of town from their roof, the long ribbon of the road supremely tempting, but there was also a highly visible checkpoint manned by at least three Hydra soldiers.

They were going to have to wait until late that night and try to make it across the fields, on foot. Peter didn’t like their odds, but they had to get the intelligence on the Hydra research station out. Or try to.

At least dusk was falling, and the long shadows were in their favor. Hydra would be changing shifts again, but after a few more hours even the fresh men would be bored and careless.

They just had to wait.

Peter lay back down, and waited. The road was so damned tempting, but it was empty of all traffic; they’d stick out like flares in the twilight.

In fact, he could clearly see something coming down that ribbon of pavement—a messenger on a motorcycle, it looked like.

The back of his head prickled. Peter froze. Something was happening, and his spider-sense was going off like a police siren in the distance.

What was it, what had changed—?

“Parker?” Carter said sharply.

Peter peered out into the descending gloom. The town, the road, the motorcycle coming nearer… wait, that didn’t have a sidecar.

Most of the German military bikes had sidecars. The heavy frame looked familiar, though, more like a Harley-Davidson than the BMWs that were so common in Europe.

“Fuck no!” Peter hissed as the motorcycle accelerated and sped through the checkpoint, a trail of fire springing up its wake. The Hydra soldiers turned to follow it, raising their guns to shoot.

They burst into flame.

The motorcycle burst into flame.

Peter recoiled, throwing himself backwards and scooping Van Dyne up as he ran to the far side of the roof. She squeaked, but didn’t fight as he slid down the drain pipe.

Carter landed with almost as much speed, wide-eyed. “What was that!?”

“Hell following after. We need to leave. Now!”

Van Dyne hit him on the shoulder and pointed at— Well, that _was_ a nice car.

“You know how to hotwire a Daimler?” Peter asked.

“Of course!” Van Dyne walked up to the car like she owned it. Peter looked at Carter. Carter looked at him. They scanned the street, and followed behind.

“Our car, my friends,” Van Dyne pronounced, straightening up from the lock and opening the door. _Quick work. Maybe New York socialites have more in common with New York hoods than I thought._

There was a shout from the building they were in front of, and Peter pulled his gun. Carter was faster, and there was a body in the doorway.

Peter tossed Van Dyne into the back and jumped behind the wheel, ripping and rewiring in a flash. He stomped on the gas and lurched the car forward as Van Dyne kicked the door open and Carter jumped inside.

“Parker!” she yelled as he made a bootlegger’s turn, away from the streak of fire that had shot down a cross-street far in front of them.

“Nope! Nope! Nope!” he yelped. “Van Dyne, how do we get out of here?!”

“Turn here! Turn here! What was that!” she yelled.

Peter stood on the gas, wishing the car would _go faster_.

“Parker!” Carter yelled.

They were past most of the houses, now, turning onto the ribbon of road. Peter kept to the side, avoiding the burning trail and the burning corpses as they blew past the checkpoint.

“Parker!”

“Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us!” Peter hissed. “Some damned draft board drafted _him_!”

“Parker, what the devil _was _that?” Carter asked.

“Devil is right, ma’am,” he snarled. “That was the Ghost Rider. We’re getting as far away as possible, as fast as possible.”

Carter shifted behind him. Her sidearm wouldn’t go much good against _that _thing. Peter didn’t point it out to her. It wouldn’t help.

He kept speeding away, glancing back every so often in the rear view mirror and noting how much more of the town seemed to be on fire every time.

Nothing to do but keep going and hope that hell didn’t follow them.

“Parker, wake up.”

Peter blinked, and looked up into Carter’s upside down face. She was frowning at him.

“Ugh,” he said clearly.

Carter smiled, and poked him. He flinched away, or tried to. But he was stymied by the tight confines of the space he was lying in, and just managed to kick against crates. Oh right, they’d hitched a ride on a supply truck by dint of Carter pulling out her credentials as one of His Majesty’s servants.

“We’re back, Parker. Get up, we’ll get some tea, report to Col. Phillips, and then you can wash and get some kip.”

Peter didn’t want tea, and said so. He did want help getting up, though, with his arm strapped to his chest. He’d put off the medics by claiming mere bad bruising, but Carter had helped him set it days ago. She’d watched him break it, crashing that stolen car in the scramble to escape from that hell-bound town. It hadn’t been his finest moment, but he hadn’t been that rattled in a long time. He was done with haunted circuses and trick motorcyclists dumb enough to make deals with actual devils.

He wobbled to his feet, managed not to fall over on Carter, and staggered off the back of the truck. Van Dyne was already waiting, and while she didn’t look fresh as a daisy, she did manage cute and presentable in her own particular fashion.

Dear Mary and everyone,

I am slightly laid up for a while with a broken wrist. I crashed a car [REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED] in the snow. It was fun to get to drive a Daimler though, even if it wasn’t for very long.

Love,

Peter

Dear Peter,

Of all the things I’ve worried about happening to you over there, I didn’t think crashing your car was one of them; I see now that was short-sighted of me.

Yes, yes, you’re the only one of us who can drive—I'm not including Ham and his wind-up Acme deathtraps—but we all know what you’re like behind the wheel. You learned to drive from bootleggers! Whoever decided to let you drive should be drummed out of the army, navy, or marine corps—whatever!

—All right, I’m calm again. But please, for the love of cats, be more careful. Peni already wanted to lock you in a box for the duration. Don’t make me regret talking her out of that!

B

Two weeks after a trip to the Netherlands with his superior officer for some spying and light sabotage that had turned terrifying and left him more battered than usual, Peter was in a complex of tunnels carved deep into the Vosges mountains.

He walked into the chamber he was looking for, peered up at cables dangling above the pool he’d been told about, and grimaced. The cubes didn’t look much, matte and unpolished, in their vertical ranks, strung from aircraft cable like a particularly ugly avante garde chandelier.

He clapped his hands for attention, and bellowed, “All right, everybody out of here!”

“Any particular reason, Doc?” Morita asked.

Peter held up the geiger counter. He’d had to dig it out of the analysis kit—Hydra’s disintegration ray created noticeable particle decay, but it was rare they needed to detect that after the fact. If there were any witnesses, they would never forget seeing the ray’s unearthly, unnameable light—its _blue_ light, Peter could have told them; whether that meant it was the result of arcane science or was actually from outside this dimension he didn’t know.

But Stark had figured out that disintegration left that kind of radioactive trace, so Peter had been issued a geiger counter along with everything else in the field science kit. He flipped the switch on—and the counter screeched, wailing static, like a broken radio but worse.

“What _is_ that?” Morita asked, his face puckering at the noise.

“Geiger counter.”

Some of the other soldiers were looking confused. “We haven’t half searched this room, Morita,” one of them said.

Morita stared at the counter in Peter’s hand. “How did you know?”

“Finally found a translator who speaks Hungarian. One of the forced laborers was an X-ray specialist, back in Debrecen, and had enough brains to recognize that Hydra was playing around with uranium. Everyone _out!_”

Morita nodded, “Yeah, you heard Doc Parker. Everyone out.” He grabbed the sheaf of papers off the desk he’d been rifling through, and made to make off with them.

Peter switched off the counter. Its constant chatter was annoying. And unnerving. “Nope. Don’t bring anything out.”

“Doc, we have to search the papers.”

“Not out of the room, Morita.”

“You said to leave—”

“Anything from in here might as well be smallpox blankets,” Peter explained. “You leave it here; the SSR is sending specialists, with proper tools and shielding. They should be here in a few days. _They_ can take the risks, since they’ll actually understand them and be trained to deal with them safely.”

Morita frowned, but motioned to his guys to leave off their rifling.

Peter waited until they had all filed outside, then left himself after one last look at prototype reactor. It was just as well that Hydra had been distracted by the Cube. They had too many scientists on their side. If they’d actually focused on this project instead of Cube-artifacts and impractical wonder-weapons, they might have been unstoppable.

Peter made one last survey of the room, looking for anything that was an obvious threat. The space was large, the uranium blocks dominating the space. There were monitoring equipment arranged in groups, benches and toolboxes everywhere—

A sinuous mechanical arm folded around itself, ending in a four-pronged handling claw.

“Fuck,” Peter growled.

Stark:

Enclosed is a mechanical arm (object #737838) recovered from [REDACTED]. Preliminary analysis indicates notable similarities to mechanical prostheses designed and utilized by Otto Octavius in 1933, according to Agent Parker.

Comprehensive analysis is required. If Octavius designed this, he’ll have to be dealt with. If someone else has adapted Octavius’ designs, they will have to be dealt with. Schmidt does not need another weapon designer on his roster, especially one with this level of skill.

Margaret Carter

Group Captain, SSR

Attached, 107th Infantry

Special Combat Detachment

Agent Carter,

In regards to object #737838, it’s definitely based on an Octavius design, but he’s holed up in Geneva, and from all indications the Nazis consider him degenerate and therefore won’t touch his work. Which is fortunate for us, as he is quite good at designing medical and pharmaceutical equipment, and that talent could easily be turned towards Hydra wonder weapons.

Looks like someone has decided to steal his work and pass it off as their own, with some actual improvements. I’ve sent along copies of some journal articles on Octavius designs. Parker can explain them if they’re too technical; there are some known vulnerabilities the Howlies can attack if Hydra is making weapons out of Octavius’ work.

Yours,

Jim Rhodes

Stark Industries, London

Peter was stripped to his undershirt and elbow deep in a jeep when Gabriel Jones walked up with a sheaf of V-mail.

“Hey, Doc, more letters for you!” the man said cheerfully. “Here’s one from your friend Ham. Open it up and read it, that’s always good for a laugh."

Peter wiped the engine grease off his hands and grabbed the envelopes out of Jones’ grip before the man could snoop through any more of his correspondence. There wasn’t that much privacy in camp, and Ham’s letters _were _always worth reading aloud, but Peter had to set some limits, or the others would be up in his business just because they were bored.

War was absurd and macabre—terrifying for minutes, boring for hours, exhausting enough for a lifetime.

“Just because I like you,” he told Jones, and read Ham’s letter out loud. It was cheerfully silly, and had made it intact through the censors for a change.

_Dear Pete, _

_Monday I had to deal with Doom and his duckbots—that's his duck-shaped robots to you. He's not usually my problem, but Johnny had a cold and wasn't up to take the idiot on._

_My GOD does that guy like to talk about himself. He monologues like a b-movie villain. Anyway, I pulled the plug on him, so everything's copacetic there._

_Tuesday I had to deal with an eight-legged pussycat on a rampage. More robots, too. Fortunately, that was solved by a judicious application of catnip._

_Wednesday I took my girls out to the movies. _

_Hope you're well, _

_Ham_

“Man loves his daughters,” Jones chuckled.

“Huh?” Peter looked up.

“All that ridiculousness, and then he brags about going to the movies with his girls? Must love his daughters,” Jones explained.

“Oh, they’re his girlfriends, not his daughters,” Peter said, flipping through the rest of his envelopes. There was one from Miles, Mary, Peter B, Gwen, Miguel, and there, Peni.

“Girlfriends? Two of them? And they all went to the movies together?”

“Yes.”

“Ha, I’d like to meet girls like that.”

Peter raised an eyebrow, and refrained from saying_ it depends on how you’d feel about horns and feathers._ Ham’s girlfriends were sweet, but beauty was definitely in the eye of the beholder there. Nothing in the world of toons made a lick of sense when judged by real world standards.

Mary’s letter first, then Miguel. Peni last, as it was going to be the hardest to interpret; she noticeably wasn’t saying things, and Peter hadn’t figured out how to dig them out of her long-distance without alarming the censors. Maybe another letter to B, to encourage _him _to talk to Peni? He couldn’t do anything to help from here, and it wasn’t like he could just leave, either, no matter how much Peni needed to talk to someone. It had usually been him, but that wasn’t possible now.

Dear Peter,

B is an idiot and thinks he can handle a rhino on a rampage by himself. Don’t listen to a thing he says—Ham and I had to help him corral the damage, and then do clean-up. He’s fine now, but it was touch and go for a little bit.

I saw Miles the other day. He’s working on some public safety posters for a contest for the city—best 10 designs will be on the trains, or something? He seems really into it. You’d like his designs, they’re very dramatic.

The band is opening for the Black Cat. I don’t like playing second fiddle to a headliner, but we’re lucky to be working some days, especially in such big venues. Emjay has finally learned how to write lyrics that other people can sing, so I might wind up singing back-up as well as keeping everyone on beat.

Life is going okay, other than that. Dad is talking about retiring soon, but he also says he wants to teach Little League after he’s retired—something where his biggest worry will be inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. I don’t think he’s ready to be an old man on a porch yet, but at least it will keep him out of my hair?

I’m taking another round of business courses. Eventually, I’m going to be so good with contracts and all that I can be my own agent. Or something. At least I kept Emjay from going for this really predatory contract we were offered; we’re a good band and we’ve got a following. No need to lock us into an unbalanced contract, even if it would let us headline instead of open.

I hope you’re well. We get the news, but it’s always better to get a letter from you.

Gwen

[ ](https://imgur.com/YSU9r9Q)

Dear Pete,

Gabriel and Kasey are talking about getting married! This has been a big surprise to me, as he’s never been serious about marriage before. Women, yes, but marriage, no… Nobody has told Ma yet, since we all want to put off the fireworks as long as possible—hopefully their kids will be gainfully employed before Ma notices her baby boy got married and had kids.

Speaking of employment, I’m fighting with the finance department again. I’ve got three projects for agricultural diseases that are all at critical stages, and they want to cut staff again. I can do the work of three of me, but I can’t do the work of a whole research group—that’s dozens of people, and they want a 15% reduction in force to prop up stock prices!

Also, I miss you. No one has jumped on me for ages except people who are trying to kill me.

Miguel

Miguel,

I tell you, quit and find a new job. I’ve met Tony Stark; his company still has to be better than where you’re working now, even if he’s an industrialist with the principles of a bookie.

Also, if your brother and his girl do get married, let me know. I’m pretty sure I can spring for some kind of gift from me and Mary, it’s not like I’m spending my money on anything but sending it home. Mary will have to pick a gift if your brother gets married anytime soon, but she’s good at that sort of thing. What even would be a wedding gift for them—you guys live such different lives.

Love,

Peter


	6. DEATH IS BEFORE ME TODAY

Peter twisted as he came over the rise, twisting long enough to shoot his Thompson off as cover.

The enemy patrol dove into ditches and the dirt, and Peter raked his fire over them. He didn’t know if he killed many, but he hit enough to make the others keep their heads down as the Howlies made their retreat.

He waited til the count of three, then bolted. They were almost at the treeline, just a few more yards and he’d be up and swinging. Just a few more yards. A few more…

It hit like the Sandman, like a trip-hammer. Peter stumbled, then fell. He couldn’t get up. He hurt, and he couldn’t get up. Miguel and Pen were going to be so mad at him. Mary and Aunt May were going to be so sad.

SIGNAL ALERT 

TO: PENI PARKER

STATUS UPDATE: PARKER, PETER BENJAMIN (NOIR) — CRITICAL THRESHOLD CONDITION ALERT

LOCATION: UPDATING

PORTAL: PLOTTING COORDINATES

ALERT FORWARDED TO; STACEY, GWEN; O’HARA, MIGUEL; PORKER, PETER; PARKER, PETER B.; MORALES, MILES.

ALERT FORWARDED TO: UNCLE BEN; AUNT MAI; EMERGENCY MEDICAL TEAM (DRAGON SHIFT); AUXILIARY PATROL (MURDOCK, M.); LOGISTICS AND RESOURCE PROCUREMENT (PROJECT SP//dr)

Steve didn’t see Parker go down. He just turned to count the men and was short two privates, one corporal, and one scientist. Kowalski stumbled up a moment later, trailing blood from a peppered arm and shook his head at Steve’s look.

There wasn’t anything Steve could do. If the men were alive, maybe they would be taken prisoner. If they were dead, the Howlies would (hopefully) find them in the next day or two when the regular army took this territory. Right now, they had to get back to their lines. This raid was in-and-out, to destroy Hydra’s local wonder-weapons and keep them from stiffening the Wehrmacht’s collapsing resistance.

A horrible whining noise crackled in the distance, and there was an eerie light faint on the edge of Steve’s vision. Trees shattered in the near distance, and a mechanical whine, like an under-oiled engine, sped closer. 

An eight-legged mechanical crawler, aglow with eldritch light shot through the trees above him. Steve watched it go and swore fervently. He’d never seen anything quite like it from Hydra, speeding along on legs that seemed to float together, not solid struts or durable treads. But it had to be Hydra—what else could make that unearthly light but the Cube that powered all their wonder weapons?

The vehicle moved again, skittering with unnatural lightness for something at least the size of a jeep. It paused, and eerie _light _shot in a beam from its central body. It was somehow different from the light from Hydra disintegration rays, but still something unearthly and terrifying.

It was moving in the direction they had come. Returning to base, to the Hydra outpost they had destroyed? Steve motioned to his men; with gestures, he indicated he would take a very few back to trace the wonder weapon. Falsworth would stay here, an officer to command if this blew up in Steve’s face.

The crawler skittered over the ground at speed, and Steve was hard pressed to keep up. He had to keep finding cover—the crawler moved without concern for being shot, as durable as a Tiger tank.

It stopped abruptly, and then skittered forward alarmingly, impossibly fast. The motion flushed a group of enemy soldiers like pigeons startled away from breadcrumbs.

“No!” a voice snapped, angry and high—a woman? Three of the crawler legs raised up, three down, and two moving over a figure on the ground.

It erupted in light beams again. The enemy troopers were felled, the ones who weren’t already running off in every direction, and Steve frowned. It wouldn't be the first time the snakes had sacrificed foot soldiers, but—

More broken radio sounds crackled through the night. Steve heard a hiss above his head, and looked up at a figure crouched on a tree bole, traceries of light bright against a dark body suit.

“Oh no. Oh noir!” it—he—cried, and dropped down, headfirst, landing on its hands and somersaulting to fetch up under the crawling machine. The person reached down into the underbrush, and began rummaging.

“We need to stabilize him!”

Steve motioned his men forward. That crawler had found one of his fallen and was going to take a prisoner back for interrogation; he could cut that out now, so he should.

“What the—” Bucky hissed. 

Steve silenced him with a look, then gestured. Two men around to the left, two to the right, he and Bucky here, all shooting upwards to catch that thing in their crossfire.

Ten seconds was all it took for them to get into position. Steve dropped his left arm in signal, shooting his sidearm his right.

The figure yelped and flattened before any bullet hit, and the crawler lowered itself protectively, giving shelter. Four of its legs swung up, like a boxer raising his fists.

“Stop that!” the woman’s voice called out again. “Stop shooting!”

A voice yelled from above and behind Steve, “Take 'em all! We’ll sort it out on the other side!”

He whirled, looking up, just as a man made of light jumped down from the trees, kicking Steve in the chest and knocking him flat. He struggled to get up, but the man moved like lightning, knocking him down again. "Sorry, Cap, no time to explain—”

Before he could react, Bucky was thrown over him, by another figure made of light. “Stay down, shock you!”

“Peni! Hurry up!”

“Now! Go go _go_!” the woman’s voice cried, and a circle of light swirled up like a whirlwind around Steve, Bucky, the crawler, and all—

—and the ground fell out below him, and he was falling down through a void full of stars.

He tumbled, like a paratrooper making a bad jump. He closed his eyes. Relied on his jump training. Orientate, stabilize, control himself until he was how he wanted to be, in a controlled fall that would let him land on his feet—if he’d been wearing a parachute, anyway.

He opened his eyes. His men were falling around him, and the crawler, and five figures made of that uncanny light. They were grabbing the men, pulling them into orientation by their arms. The crawler was curled around a figure—Parker, Steve realized, limp in the mechanical legs that cradled him.

“Sorry Cap,” one of the eldritch figures shouted. “We’ll sort this out when we land!” It maneuvered close to him, somehow, and grabbed him by the back of his costume, on the straps where his shield rested.

A circle of light opened below them, and they fell through. Steve landed on his feet with the help of the eldritch figure holding him.

“What the—?” Bucky murmured beside him. They were in a courtyard, smooth white brick and tiles, and plants made of light. Everything made of light, except the familiar shades of marble and concrete. It hurt his eyes just to look at things.

He was yanked sideways, and found himself staring down at an eye-searing figure. Was that a _skull _abstracted across his chest!? More Nazi grotesquerie!

“Stay out of the shocking way, bithead,” the skullface snapped. “The medics are coming!”

Steve yanked himself out of the other’s grip and tried to bring up his sidearm. The other kicked up, fast and accurate as a showgirl, and hard enough to numb Steve’s hand. He turned and blocked the second kick with his shield, grunting as he was pushed back by the other’s unnatural strength.

“Miles! A little help here!”

“On it!”

A hand landed on Steve’s shoulder, a burning, coruscating hand, and that was all he knew until the darkness took him.

AFTER ACTION REPORT

17 DEC 1944

[REDACTED]

MISSING: CPT ROGERS, SG; SSGT BARNES, JB; T4 MORITA, JK; T3 NAKAMURA, GW; CPL DUGAN, TAC; PFC TULLY, LS; PFC BRONKOWSKI, CL; PVT RAWLING, EP; PFC HAYDEN, MV; AGT3 PARKER, PB


	7. OVER THE RAINBOW

Peni was screaming for the medical team even as she dropped out of the SP//dr mech. Miguel made space for her over Peter’s body; he’d webbed up every bleeding hole, but that was a stopgap at best. He couldn’t even risk turning Peter over until they got a neck brace on him—you could regenerate nerves if you knew what you were doing, but the person had to be alive to start with. A jostled neck at this stage could turn into a snapped vagus nerve, and that was death.

Everything was narrow, and Miguel could only exist in the moment of ‘see a bleed, staunch a bleed, look again.’

Then the medical team were there, in their white smocks, and Miguel was pushed aside, and Peni too.

They watched numbly as Peter was field treated and wrapped for transport. Miguel didn’t know what any of the equipment did, but Peter was in a glowing bubble and away on a gurney before he could really process anything anyway.

“Come here, sit down,” Ham was saying, and tugging on Miguel’s hand. The shortest Spider was trying to steer him and Peni to a bench, and he went along numbly.

After a moment, the shakes hit him, and his claws came out, screeching across the concrete he sat on.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Peter B was in his face suddenly, pulling his hands away from the bench. “Look at me, Miguel. Look at me, you ridiculous murder kitten.”

The old joke made Miguel bark out a laugh. He brought up his hands to cover his mouth before he started howling, and was surprised to find his face wet. How had that happened?

Mercifully, B didn’t mention it. “Miles and Gwen are dealing with our tag-alongs,” he said. “It looks like we got Captain America and his crew in the confusion. They’ll get them stashed somewhere.”

“He’s shorter than I was expecting,” Miguel said. Peter was probably taller—skinnier, but taller. Why had Peter been so impressed with the man in his letters?

“Well, your Cap is built like a brick shit-house. And Gwen’s is tiny, and could still kick my ass. Noir’s is kind of average, except for the monochrome.”

Miguel nodded, and finally looked over at Peni, sitting just a few feet away. 

Ham was standing in her lap, his stubby arms around her neck. She looked like she’d been crying, blotchy-faced and red-rimmed eyes.

“What I want to know is how you knew Noir was in trouble, Peni?” Peter B asked.

Peni straightened up, and gave Peter a defiant look. “I implanted a subcutaneous transmitter with vital-signs monitoring before he left.”

Peter B’s eyebrows rose up.

“You said I had to let him go to this stupid war! That doesn’t mean I have to let him _die!_”

“You implanted a transmitter? And Noir was just okay with that?” Peter asked. “Oh, you didn’t ask. Why am I even surprised?”

Peni frowned, and squared her shoulders.

“Peter was being an idiot, I don’t blame her for not asking,” Miguel interjected.

Peter B rolled his eyes.

Mary was changing for bed, when the typewriter began to rattle.

MARY, ARE YOU HOME? THERE’S BAD NEWS. REPLY AS SOON AS YOU SEE THIS — MIGUEL

Mary pulled her bedjacket close against a sudden cold chill. I’M HOME NOW, she pecked. She had barely clicked the last key down when there was a whirl of light, and _color_, and a figure materialized in front of her, covered head to toe in darkly glittering fabric, bright and strange as the moon. Mary stared—was that a skull on its chest? A spider? Both?

Then the figure pulled off its cowl, and it was only Miguel.

“Mary,” he said, and his eyes were full of grief. “You need to come. It’s Peter.”

Peter looked … not like Peter, Mary thought. It could have been anyone in that bed. It could have been a cloth dummy, wrapped up like Karloff in _The Mummy_. Or Karloff in _Frankenstein_, which was worse to think on.

Mary sat on the edge of the bed and picked up his hand. It was coated in a layer of soft clear stuff that didn’t feel like anything she’d ever touched before, and there were fine wires all through it. They matched the wires that ghosted over every inch of Peter’s exposed skin and into it as well, like tiny questing roots. There were more over his face, like the skeleton of a gas mask from the previous war—a ghastly distortion that obscured damage that Mary didn’t even want to contemplate.

“This looks bad,” Miguel said, as he sat down on the other side of Peter’s bed and hesitated to touch Peter’s other hand. 

“Yes,” she repressed an inappropriate urge to giggle. Or to howl and sob. “It looks bad.”

Something in her tone must have been alarming because Miguel came round the bed, faster than anything.

He looked into her eyes, his own wide and worried. Tentatively, he put his hands on her shoulders, “I’m here.”

She sobbed, and put her head down on his shoulder. She just sobbed. Miguel made uncertain soothing noises at her as she cried. And she did, for rather a while, in an alien room, in an alien New York, while her husband’s alien paramour stood and let her weep on him.

After, Miguel coaxed her out of the room and down to a little nook with tables and potted plants. He made her drink a glass of sugar water, and then eat a soft sweet pudding before she even thought to ask where they had come from.

“The commissary, probably? I just know you can ask for food and a drone will bring you some.”

“A drone?” 

Miguel nodded at the flat disk that was hovering—hovering!—beside their tiny table.

“Will that be all, Madame Parker?” a soft, calm voice asked. 

“Uhm, yes?” she replied. “For now.”

The disk made a thoughtful hum, and floated away.

“I’m sorry for crying on you,” she said. “I shouldn’t. I’ve seen worse.”

“You’ve seen _worse_?” Miguel’s voice strangled into shrillness.

“In Spain.” She looked down at the table. “At least the doctors here think there’s hope.”

Miguel looked bleak. Just all of the sudden his usual calm face crumbled and he was head down and holding back tears.

“Miguel?” She stood up to go to him, and he reached down to pull her into the seat with him, hip to hip and knee knocking knee. His arm was a warm bar against her back as he curled against her.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “Sorry. It’s just so…” He hissed a sigh, breathing out hard between his fangs.

She waited, but he didn’t continue. “This is a bad day,” she said after several awkward minutes.

“The worst,” he agreed. “I… don’t usually do this.”

“What, manhandle your friends’ wives?”

He went utterly pale, all the warm _color_ draining out of him until he was waxy, and then it all flooded back in until he was flushed.

“...I don’t usually cry on people. It doesn’t help.”

“Sometimes it helps,” she said.

“Almost never, in my experience,” he made that sighing hiss again. “Or maybe I just had terrible examples. Peter thinks so.”

“Peter thinks so, does he?”

“Peter doesn’t like my family, except for Gabriel. That’s all right, I don’t like his, except for you.”

“And the other Spiders.”

“Oh, the other Spiders are both our family. No taking sides there, even if Ham is a troll.”

“Ghh,” Steve groaned and cracked open his eyes. The ceiling was spackled in the shade of paper-smoke, but when he looked to the side, the walls glowed with dim light.

“Oh, good, you’re awake.”

Steve froze for a moment, then twisted to sit up and look in the direction of the voice.

A man made of light was sitting beside his bed, on an overstuffed bench-seat. He glowed faintly with his own internal light, and his clothes were eye-searing. Steve blinked. And then blinked again.

If you could look past the uncanny light that shaded every inch of the man, he looked eerily like Doc Parker, from the length of his jaw and the bump of his broken nose to the way his hair was cut short to suppress a tendency to curl.

“Got to say, Cap, you look weird in black and white.”

Steve didn’t know how to respond to that. He risked a glance around the room. It looked almost like a barracks, one row of cots lined up along a wall. His men were laid out on the cots, each one with a blanket thrown over them. Bucky was in the bed next to him, and Morita beyond him.

Bucky looked odd, like he was faintly glowing. Unnerved, Steve reached out to touch him, pressing his hand gently to Bucky's; his friend's skin felt warm and normal.

“The color's an effect of medical treatment,” the man said reassuringly. “The blood extender will pass out of his system before the end of the day.”

“So this… light… will go away?” Steve asked warily.

“Yep. Maybe before he wakes up.” The man stood and stretched his back. “You hungry? I’m hungry. Want a burger? Or the closest 3154 can come? The food is going to be a little weird, sorry.”

“Who are you?” Steve asked. “Are you… a relative of Doc’s?” The man looked too much like Parker; Steve had read the file—Doc was officially an orphan raised by his paternal uncle and wife, but that could have been a story told to a child. Or maybe Doc hadn’t told them all the truth about himself; a father who was… alien … was just the sort of thing a man might keep to himself.

“Ah, right,” the man said, and held out his hand. “Peter B. Parker. And you’re Steve Rogers, also known as Captain America. Right now you probably have a bunch of questions. So ask me. I’ll tell you what I can.”

“Are they okay—Doc, and the rest of my men?”

“Everyone we grabbed has been treated. Noir’s the only one still in surgery, I think. Your friends will probably wake up in a couple of hours. You were just a bit faster, supersoldier metabolism and all.”

“Where are we?”

“New York.” 

Steve stared at the man.

“Yeah, I know, looks a little more Technicolor than you remember. It’s Peni’s New York, not yours._ Much_ shinier—and the medical facilities are a hell of a lot better.”

“Peni? Doc’s friend Peni?”

“Yep.”

“And you’re … Doc’s friend B,” Steve said in realization.

“Yep, that’s me. Peter B. When you’ve got three Peters, everyone gets a nickname.”

Doc had said that, about why all his friends called him ‘Noir’. Denier had said something about a famous cabaret that might have been a dirty joke, Steve still wasn’t sure.

“B, Ham, Le Chat Noir,” Steve said.

That made Peter B bark out another laugh. “Do you really call him ‘The Black Cat’?” the man asked, still snickering. “Oh, that’s...definitely a picture, yeah…”

Steve couldn’t see what was so funny, but that was irrelevant.

“Are we prisoners?”

That drew Peter B up short. “No—well. Not really? I mean, nobody is going to let you wander around unescorted, but _I_ don’t get to wander around unescorted. This place has rules.”

Steve narrowed his eyes and Peter B raised his hands placatingly.

“Look, we treated your wounded. Give us 24 hours for everything to flush out of their systems and I’ll get you back to where you were myself.”

“And Doc? He’ll be ready to go back with us then?”

That made the man’s face close down. “No. No, even if the surgery works, he won’t.”

“How bad is he?”

“How bad? You ever try to glue a vase back together? That’s how bad it is.”

You couldn’t glue a broken vase together and have something as good as it was. Steve didn’t like the implications for Parker’s prospects. He looked away.

There was an asklepian above the door—the familiar serpent and staff of hospitals and doctors throughout the world. Steve blinked at it.

“Is this a hospital?”

“Project SP//dr’s medical wing,” Peter B said. “Peni’s throwing her weight around, and she has a lot of it.”

Steve knew almost nothing about Peni. She was a friend of Doc Parker’s, she sent him photos of flowers, and Doc spent a lot of time on her letters. But Doc was a faithful correspondent to all his friends back home. He claimed it was because he’d worked as a newsman when he was young; the Howlies teased that he was trying to fund the Post Office by himself, being the only one who wasn’t allowed free postage, technically.

“C’mon, let’s get you some to eat.” The man didn’t pick up a phone—there were none, nor anything that looked like an intercom, or a voicepipe, or a pneumatic tube system—just said to the room “We’d like to have some food in here, for me and Captain Rogers.”

A crisp voice replied back from a hidden speaker that Steve couldn’t see. “Mid-day calibrated rations for two will be delivered, Peter B Parker. Ten minutes.”

“... What was that?” 

“I ordered food. It’s like telephoning a deli, but they’re going to deliver to the room. Fair warning, I don’t know what most of it is. I just go ‘oh, the _yellow_ thing with the crunchy bits, I love that’, and they give me more of it.”

Steve stared at Peter B. “What’s ‘_yellow’_?” he asked.

“Right, right. It’s a shade, except where you guys have white, black, and a billion variants on grey, we’ve got more, and we call them _colors_.” He tapped his chest. “This is red, this is blue, you get the idea. For yellow, think eggs and lemons, and sunshine.”

Steve frowned.

“Ugh,” Bucky groaned from his cot, “what hit me?”

Peter B raised his hand like a schoolboy. “Technically I did. Sorry about that.”

Bucky whirled at that and fell off the cot. Steve went over to help him up, and found Bucky staring at his hands, which were still glowing faintly.

“The hell?” he yelped.

“You’re in an alternate dimension,” Peter B called from where he still sat. “That’s just a side effect of medical treatment. It will go away in a few hours.”

“An alternate dimension? That sounds like a story from _Astounding_, or that one by Wells.”

Peter B chuckled and walked over stand next to Steve. When Bucky got a good look at him, Bucky froze, wide-eyed.

“I know that one! H. G. Wells, _Men Like Gods,_” he said. “Noir kept mentioning it, so I looked up. This isn’t Utopia, but the idea is kind of the same.”

Bucky looked up at Steve and said, “This is some fucked up Barsoom shit, Steve.”

Mary watched Miguel sit, stand, pace, and sit again. It was exhausting to watch him, but not the helpful kind of distracting.

“Miguel, either sit or go. Your pacing is wearing _me_out.”

“I shouldn’t leave you alone,” Miguel said.

“Would you, though? I’ll be with Peter, and I’m sure one of the others will sit with me.”

Miguel shifted again. “No. I shouldn’t. I can handle it. Just because I want to beat someone up doesn’t mean you’re not more important.”

Mary raised an eyebrow. Miguel obviously _wanted _to go out, the way Peter had sometimes gotten restless just before he disappeared—went out to patrol, Mary had figured out later—but also thought he should stay with her. She didn’t know if she should be flattered that Miguel put her first, or if she should shoo him away like a dog that needed to run itself into exhaustion.

But she did want him with her. He was her closest friend among Peter’s friends, even given how he could turn prickly on a dime. The others liked her for Peter’s sake. Miguel was the only one who she was sure liked her for herself too.

“Come here then,” she said, and indicated the bench seat beside her.

Miguel sat gingerly, like sitting next to friends wasn’t something he didn't do regularly. 

Mary didn’t care. She leaned against, seeking the comfort of contact.

Miguel stiffened, like a startled cat. Eventually he relaxed, and even went so far as to put his arm around her. 

Mary could have cried, she was so tired. But she actually just fell asleep.

Mary was asleep, tucked into one of the odd gel-padded benches that passed as seating here in Peni’s Nueva York. Miguel perched on the back of the thing. The trivial work of keeping his balance kept him from climbing the walls, though it would probably come to that eventually. 

Maybe Peni’s people wouldn’t mind the gouges he’d leave? That kind of pacing sounded shocking good right now.

The door wooshed open, and Gwen poked her head through. 

She looked over at Mary, and then up at Miguel. She tilted her head, and closed the door behind her at his nod.

Gwen skirted around the bed, as if Miguel was going to miss how she wasn’t looking. “How are you doing, Miguel?”

“Oh, I’m shocking fine, I am,” Miguel spat, cheery and vicious. He flashed a wide smile, showing off his fangs. He felt his claws prickle his palms as he fisted his hands.

Gwen’s eyes narrowed, and her hand clenched. “Miguel.”’

He hunched his shoulders. “Sorry, Gwen. Old, bad habits.” He should not ever sound that much like his Da. He was better than that man, continual effort though it was to be so.

“Hmm,” was her reply.

Miguel watched her look at him, and Mary, and conspicuously not look at Peter on the bed.

“Peter’s still breathing, so there’s that.”

That made Gwen’s eyes dart sideways to look at Peter. Maybe it was cruel of him to push her to that, but it made his fangs ache that she hadn’t been even _looking_.

“Oh, Pete,” Gwen said, and laid a hand on the bed, not even daring to touch Peter’s hand, wrapped in 32nd century medical gloop.

“I can’t tell if he’s getting better under all that, or not,” Miguel said.

Gwen shook her head. “I… Peni would know.”

Miguel grunted.

“At least he’s here,” Gwen said. “He made it to the hospital. He’s still here.”

Miguel knew he should be relieved that Peter was still breathing, that they hadn't been too late. He'd lost people before without a chance to save them, or even say goodbye.

Not that Peter would hear anything he said now—

“This is such a shocking shitshow,” Miguel mumbled. He curled his fists against his eyes and tried to rub the tiredness away.

“Miguel?”

“Have you eaten?”

“What? No. I mean, just with Mary. I had… a fresca, maybe some mochi?”

“How long ago? No, don’t answer. Hello, commissary,” Gwen talked into her earbud. “Please send some food to this room. No, not for me. For Mary Parker, guest TRN-90214 and Miguel O’Hara, guest TRN-703. Yes, that’s acceptable.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You are, you just don’t realize it.”

Miguel really doubted that he was.

The door wooshed open a minute later, and a set of disks floated into the room. They hovered over to where he was sitting, grew legs, and turned into a small table, which slid open to reveal three place-settings, complete with food.

“Hey, I didn’t order for me?!” Gwen said, and apparently heard something in her earbud that made her roll her eyes and sit down.

“Unidentifiable food, yum,” she said, and picked up a utensil. “Miguel, sit like a person, not a gargoyle, and eat something.”

Miguel grunted.

“Miguel.”

He got off the bench and sat. He looked down at the plate. It looked like noodles and tiny round things, which might be tapioca or frog eyes, but were probably fish roe. There was a lot of fish farming in Peni’s Nueva York. They were part of the municipal water sanitation system, or some damned thing.

A few bites in, he could feel his brain working again, like his battery was finally out of low-power mode.

“I’m sorry.”

That made Gwen look up. “What?”

“For being a bithead.”

Gwen raised an eyebrow at him and gestured with her utensil. “You get a pass. Upset and hungry is a bad combo.”

“You don’t want to look at him,” he mumbled.

Gwen’s face fell, and she deliberately looked towards Peter in his bed. “My Peter… he didn’t even make it into an ambulance. He still had scales when they buried him.”

Miguel winced. He hadn’t known that. He was such a _twist_.

“It’s always been hard when Noir gets hurt. Or B, but he’s so much older than… well. He’s older. And I know they’re different people.”

“Yeah, they are,” Miguel said, and stuffed another bite in his mouth. A closed mouth gathered no feet, and all that.

“...mmm?” Mary made a sound as she shifted. “‘Zat food?”

“Hello, Mary,” Miguel leaned towards her. “Yeah, it’s food. There’s some of you if you want.”

Mary wobbled upright, and rubbed her eyes. She looked down at the place setting in front of her. “Uhm, what is it?”

“No idea,” Miguel admitted. “Noodles and fish roe, maybe?”

“Could be noodles and fake fish. There’s vegetables, though. And this drink,” Gwen gestured with her cup, “I don’t know what it is, but it tastes red.”

“It’s a hibiscus fresca,” Miguel said, rolling his eyes. 

“Uhm, all right,” Mary said, and gamely picked up her utensil. She only paused for a moment; Miguel didn’t know what to call the thing either—neither spoon, nor fork, nor spork, it was just plain weird. You got used to eating with one after a bit, though.

“Peni will be by soon. If you’re going to stay, she’ll find you someplace to sleep.” Gwen said to Mary.

“Oh, I—” Mary looked down at herself. “I’m not tired now.”

“Shock you are,” Miguel said. “You need a real bed, if you’re staying here until Peter’s awake again.”

“Do you think he will?” Mary asked in a small voice. “Wake up, I mean?” Tears gathered in her eyes. 

Miguel scooted close and put his arm around her shoulders. “Yes. Everything would have to bitflip for him not to wake. And Peni’s people are too good for that to happen.”

“We’ll get you a change of clothes or two,” Gwen added. “That fancy dress can’t be comfortable for much longer.”

Mary giggled, just a tiny hurt noise. “It’s a nightgown. Not a dress. A nightgown. I was in such a lather I didn’t even change..”

Miguel felt his eyes go wide, and looked over at Gwen.

“Oh. Well…”

“We can’t tell,” Gwen said. “I thought you’d been out somewhere fancy, maybe. I’ll see about getting you some other clothes. Uhm, they might be sloppier than you’re used to, if that’s okay?”

“Yes, yes,” Mary nodded. She leaned into Miguel for another moment, then rubbed her eyes dry and said. “I’ll be fine. I’ll. Be. Fine.”

“Yeah, you will be. We’ll help all the way, won’t we, Miguel?”

“Absolutely.” Miguel said. 

He glanced over to the bed. If only Peter would get with the program and wake up.

“How did you know?” Mary asked, finally dressed for the day in borrowed clothes. She didn’t know where Gwen had gotten them, but the wide-legged trousers and sweater were better than wandering around in her gown and bedjacket any longer. All of the Spiders had been polite enough to ignore her dishabille, but this was better. “How did you know Peter was hurt so badly?”

"Subcutaneous tracker. We didn't tell him we had it set up. He would've said it was unfair, that he had an out and nobody else did,” Peni explained.

"And besides, he'd've been even more shocking reckless if he'd known."

Mary couldn’t contradict Miguel. Peter B led the others in nodding along, but they all did it. She muffled a sob.

Peter woke to the soft sound of voices—and that weird chiming music Peni liked so much. He blinked up at a ceiling that was all sculptural curves and dim, recessed lights. They were faintly..._yellow_. That was the word for that color, bright and cheerful and the easiest to blot over by accident when you were experimenting with Miles’ ink pens.

_Oh, that’s odd_, he thought. He couldn’t imagine what would cause yellow light. The Cube-based weapons were blue. Had Hydra found a similar artifact. Had _Stark_? The man had found the Atlantean trident, after all; a nine-days-wonder, that was still causing prominent physicists to write genteelly snide letters to each other in the leading science journals.

He tried sitting up, but he didn’t have the strength, or the ability to bend enough. Everything felt gummy, like he’d rolled in a paste-pot and then in sawdust. He could move his fingers, so he did. He was dressed in crisp, smooth clothes, not his battered (and frankly filthy) SSR gear.

_Hospital? _He wondered. It could be. He could be in a hospital that had _yellow lights_. 

“Peter? Peter!” 

_What are you doing here, Mary?_ Peter wanted to ask. But he was really tired, so he just closed his fingers around hers when she grabbed his hand and tried to turn over. That didn’t work, but he fell asleep anyway.

Four days after they'd been dumped without fanfare on the edge of camp, Steve was working on yet another report when there was a ruckus that Steve could hear across the muddy footpaths.

“Captain, you’d better come see this…” Morita rushed out the words as he skittered into the command post, such as it was—a building with most of its walls intact and army tarps draped over the holes.

Doc Parker was sitting at the field kitchen, just under the tenting. He was sitting on a table, his feet propped on a bench, and crates piled around him like a supply truck had unpacked itself.

Jones and Bucky were prying the lids off the crates, whistling like happy birds.

“Parker! Where have you been?!” Peggy could have been smoother, but the sharpness was concern. Probably.

“They wouldn’t let me leave until they were sure I wouldn’t fall over the minute I got back, ma’am,” Parker said with a grimace. “Peni sent these as an apology for making me late.”

“Are these…oranges?” Jones asked, confusion and wonder in his tone.

Steve watched as Doc Parker extended a hand, and took one of the things from Bucky’s hand. It had the pebbly texture of an orange, and the not-perfect round shape; there was even a dimple where it would have attached to the tree. But it wasn’t the right shade for an orange at all, or a lemon, or lime.

Instead, it glowed with an uncanny light.

Then Doc split it open with his thumb, the peel nearly as thin as waxed paper. It was the same alien _color_ inside, with a crisp scent of citrus coming off it. 

“Close enough,” Doc Parker said, and put one of the sections in his mouth. He closed his eyes, obviously enjoying the taste, which was probably amazing just from the scent of the things. “Peni sent enough for every man in the company to have two.”

Dear Mary,

I really am recovered now. I’m sorry for scaring you.

I’m following the company further into Europe—you’ll see us on the news reels, probably before this letter even gets to you. I just wish this was all over with, so I could see you again.

I miss you.

Love,

Peter


	8. WE FEW, WE HAPPY FEW

Dear Mary, 

I can’t tell you much, but now that we’ve finally crossed the Rhine into Germany, the Wehrmacht is well and truly crumbling. The SS still fight like madmen, and Hydra is worse, but the tide has turned. Germany has lost most of its supply lines, and every bit of news I hear about the Soviets puts them within a hundred miles of Berlin.

The SSR still has a few targets left, but I may be home by Christmas. Won’t that be a thing?

Love, 

Peter

“Doc, don’t make us explain to your friends again,” Bucky said, quiet as a mouse.

Steve watched in bemusement as Parker hunkered back down from where he’d been eyeing the trees in that way that said he was a moment from jumping up and disappearing into the piney boughs. It was useful to have him running up there, taking out embedded snipers, but maybe not so much on this edge of the treeline. It was more exposed than Steve should have let him risk.

Parker gave Bucky a considering glance. “Anywhere you’d prefer, Sergeant?”

“Back at Baker 1st Platoon, there’s more cover but still enough sightlines. Go scout that way.”

Parker nodded, and headed off toward 1st Baker. He kept low, in a way that was halfway to scampering and just the right side of abnormal.

Steve raised an eyebrow as Doc did so, and once he was out of earshot, the question, “Mother-henning Parker, Buck? You’re lucky he takes takes it well. He’s Carter’s subordinate, technically.”

“He’s an idiot, technically,” Bucky answered. “And Carter’s foisted her troublemaker off on us. One of you was already enough. I don’t want his friends to show up again. Leiber and Brackett are fun to read, but being in one of their books turned out more exciting than I want, and I’m in the army.”

Steve snorted at that.

“He’s an idiot, but he’ll be useful on the next mission.”

Bucky looked up at him. “What damned thing are you getting us into now?”

“We’re going to catch a train, Buck. That’s it.”

“Horseshit, we are.”

The dull twang of his spider-sense hit a sudden crescendo and Peter staggered. After he and Jones had cleared the engine compartment, thankfully.

“Doc?”

“Something’s wrong,” Peter said, and shook his head. He hauled himself upright. There was nothing in the engine cabin, nothing alive but Jones.

“Can you drive this thing?” he muttered, and threw himself through the door before Jones could more than make an affirmative noise.

There were obstacles in the carriages, but not for long. Peter went to the ceiling, and ran that way past the bodies that he and Jones had left as they made their way to the engine. Running the other way now, Peter ignored them. They weren’t important.

The screaming in his head was important, and it was yelling _back, back, back!_

The doors tore like paper when he grabbed at them, and he ran. He ran.

Through another door, and there was too much room. Half the side of the train was gone, and Barnes was blown out, barely hanging onto a rail.

Rogers was desperately trying to reach him. It was too far.

The rail screamed, metal giving up the ghost in an unholy shriek.

Peter leapt. Grabbed.

And fell.

_Always protect the neck and spine, _Peter B had said a long time ago, drilling them all. _Plenty of people can survive without an arm or a leg, if it comes to that, even a broken back sometimes, but a broken neck kills._

Barnes flailed in his arms, and Peter webbed them together. The mountain was tumbling all around, and even he couldn’t tell which was was up with sky and snow-covered mountains all the same damned shade.

Peter shot out his silk web blind, feeling no connection, no connection, there, the taut spring of his silk connecting to _something_. He squeezed Barnes against him, arms crossed to catch and slingshot them somewhere. 

Into trees and snow and branches beating against his face and back.

They tumbled again, bouncing ungracefully to a landing that ended with dull, deadened crack.

Barnes howled.

Peter patted him down hurriedly. Neck, spine, arms—there, that was it. A double break across Barnes’ forearm, bad, but not immediately or near-term fatal.

Barnes was hissing foul curses in at least three languages, and trying not to cry as his tears were freezing on his lashes. Peter positioned the broken arm against Barnes’ chest and webbed it stuck, not even a sling, but it would have to do. Peter’s silk was brittle in the cold, and it would only hold up to so much wear and tear.

It was a miracle that Peter hadn’t crashed them into the mountainside worse.

“Come on, get up,” Peter pulled Barnes up by his good arm. “We got to get out of here.”

“We need shelter,” Barnes managed through his pain. “Heat, and water.”

“Can you walk?”

Barnes laughed hollowly. “Where? There’s no path. You’d have to be a mountain goat.”

Peter closed his eyes, took a deep, deliberate breath, and opened them again. And surveyed. Too high, up slopes that a normal man would need mountaineering gear for.

“Right,” Peter said, and pulled Barnes pick-a-back over his pained squawking. “Hold on.” It would be slow going, but he could carry Barnes. No web-swinging, and as little wall-crawling as he could manage, but he was going to get Barnes off this mountain. 

Hopefully intact.

Then they’d figure out where the hell they were—besides somewhere in fucking Germany—and how to get back to the Howlies.

He hoped.

Mrs. Parker,

I regret to inform you that your husband went missing [REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED] 

Your husband was one of the agents recommended to me by [REDACTED] and I have always found him to be one of my most reliable agents. He [REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED].

On a personal note, you have my deepest sympathy, and if there is anything I can do to help, please let me know. I have some strings I can pull for you that will work even from this side of the Atlantic.

Margaret Carter

Group Captain, 

Strategic Science Reserve.

“Doc!” was all the warning Peter got before Steve Rogers tried to hug the stuffing out of him. It was just as well that Peter was a lot sturdier than normal people, or else he might have passed out from lack of oxygen.

“Hello, Captain,” he replied when his feet were back on the floor.

“My god, you look awful!” 

Peter chuckled tiredly. “The Soviets tried, but they’re pretty short on …. Everything, basically.”

“But you’re all right?” Rogers asked. 

“Better than I should be, after tumbling off that mountain.”

“Good, good.”

Peter looked beyond, to Agent Carter’s drawn face. He’d been debriefed, and not by his own superior; maybe they thought she wouldn’t be objective. It was the first time he’d seen anyone he knew since he’d stepped off that Russian transport. He kind of missed Sgt. Petrova and her band of sharpshooting valkyries, and Lt Akeimov and his unit. Things hadn’t been exactly good with them—they both openly admitted they didn’t have any pull against the political officers, and knowing that he and Barnes were at the mercy of dubious Soviet allies had been nerve-wracking.

Being at the mercy of his own superiors and their paranoid counter-intelligence jackals was even more worrying. Somehow.

“You got the news about Sgt. Barnes?”

“Yes,” Agent Carter replied. “Badly injured, with sepsis.”

“But they’re treating him now,” Rogers added. “And that penicillin is a miracle drug.”

Peter looked at the Captain's hopeful expression and wished he could leave this to someone else to tell. “They are, and it is, but it wasn’t sepsis," he said. “It was gangrene. I could smell it. The Soviet medics could smell it. And the Soviet doc.”

“How bad?” Rogers asked, his face going drawn and grim.

“Open fracture of ulna and radius,” Peter pointed out on his own arm, then made a sawing motion. Rogers went still, understanding. “The Soviet doc, she did a good job, and now that we’re here, the docs do have penicillin, but Barnes is definitely going home.”

Rogers squared his shoulders, threw up his head, and nodded like a man walking off to challenge a mob boss. He strode through the doors to the ward. Peter could hear him greeting Barnes cheerily, their voices muffled by the door and distance.

“And how are you, Agent Parker?” Carter asked.

“Plain exhausted, ma’am,” Peter admitted. “Give me a week to sleep out of the cold, though, and I’ll be back to work.”

Dear Mary and Aunt May,

First off, I’m not dead. I just fell off a mountain. Sgt Barnes was with me the whole time.

Second, I spent three weeks with the Soviet unit that rescued us. I’m sorry I couldn’t send word for so long, but the Soviets are harder pressed the Western allies. The common soldiers were very kind and friendly, though. Maybe a little too friendly—one of the units was female soldiers, and I really wondered if Barnes was going to become a male war bride, some of the ladies were so taken with him.

Third, I’m all right now. I’ve been checked out by our docs, and I’m fine. I’ll be at headquarters for a while, not doing anything more strenuous than typing, I promise.

Please tell everyone that I’m all right, that I love you all, and hopefully there won’t be many more months of this.

Love,

Peter

PS Barnes was wounded badly enough that he’s being sent back to the States. I’ll send you his location as soon as I can, but he’s from Brooklyn. If he should wind up back in the city, a visit would be kind.


	9. I SHALL NOT FAIL THAT RENDEZVOUS

Dear Mary,

We’ve chased Hydra to their last stronghold, and will probably be done with them by [REDACTED]. 

Maybe I will actually see you by Christmas.

Love,

Peter.

When they made the assault on the final Hydra stronghold, the tunnels inside the mountain were wide enough for four men to walk abreast, which made clearing them nightmarish. Peter wondered at what kind of boring machines Hydra had to do this—they would have had to build them themselves to get this size.

Dugan yelled ahead of him, “Doc, we’ve got a lab! Get over!”

Peter loped up to the doorway beside Dugan, and stopped. The room was enormous, almost as big as a hanger. It was dominated by two gargantuan cylinders, that looked like electrical turbines. However, if you were a trained physicist and were familiar with electrical turbines looked like, they didn’t. Instead they looked like very strange cyclotrons facing each other.

And if you were a Spider who’d been dragged across the multiverse by a criminally reckless experimenter when you were not quite a year into being a Spider, they looked like alarm and dread.

“What is this shit?” Dugan asked.

“Trouble,” Peter murmured. He was transfixed, staring at the collider array as Dugan directed a squad in to secure this lab and all of the little lab rats that were scurrying around it in their Hydra lab coats.

“Get your hands off!” a woman shouted. In English. Perfect, American-accented English.

Peter made a step forward, jolted out of his fascination with the collider array. He looked across the room. 

Dugan and some of the other soldiers had separated out a tall, older woman, dressed in the same impractically off-black lab coats that all of Hydra’s scientists wore. You’d never see blood or grime on that shade, which was one of the main points of a lab coat—keep dangerous spills _off_ you, and allow you to notice when that happened so you didn’t do it again or wander around with dangerous substances on your person.

But the woman...

The Hydra soldiers’ superstitious mutterings about “die hexen” were suddenly clear. _Not Otto after all…_

“Doctor Octopus,” Peter found himself growling.

Her head whipped around like a dog after a squirrel, and she peered across the room at Peter. Almost a decade older, she wasn’t showing it, but her _color_ was alien, she looked like a tear through reality. How she had landed here, in his universe?

“You…I know you,” she muttered, and peered at him through huge circular glasses. Peter saw when she recognized him. Her eyes widened in joy and excitement. “You were the one in the coat! And the hat!” she crowed. “Hello, Peter Parker! It’s going to be _so much fun_ to kill you!”

Her lab coat exploded from the back, and the four soldiers nearest her—including Dugan—were hit as her mechanical arms emerged. She laughed, and rose on those soft-bakelite tentacles, lurching over the bodies on the ground as she scrambled towards him, cackling.

Peter leaped before the arms hit where he’d been. Cat-and-mouse was not a game he wanted to play as the mouse, but the Octopus was so much more dangerous than Dr. Octavius with his wheelchair of scalpels had ever been to Peter.

He scrambled for the door. A shot of silk and he launched himself through, flipping off the opposite wall and down the corridor. There was no room for this, but he had to flee. There was no room to maneuver. He had to get out of Doc Ock’s reach.

“Make a hole!” he bellowed as he shot silk after silk, pulling himself through the corridors. Soldiers threw themselves against the walls to get out of his way.

He could hear Doc Ock cackling behind him, “Oh, Peter!” 

The lurching thuds of her tentacles were getting closer as Peter fled. 

She’d _made a collider. _Doc Ock had used Hydra's resources to make a collider. It was big and clunky and primitive, because she hadn’t had Peni’s tech, or Miguel’s, or even her own, but _his,_ generations behind what she’d started with. It had to be even _more _unstable than the original super collider that had yanked them all into Miles’ world. 

_Get to where you can fight, and take her down,_ he told himself. _Before she gets a chance to use it._

Steve chased the Aryan Skull through the tunnels and out into an enormous hangar full of planes. Most were tiny little two-seat scouts, barely more sturdy that gliders, or those goofy-looking rocket-fliers, but at the far end of the hanger was an enormous flying wing, as dark and ominous as a thunderhead, with its propellers spinning up. 

He threw his shield, and knocked the Skull down. That drew fire from the Hydra soldiers, but delayed the Skull just one more moment. 

Parker shot out from a tunnel opening, throwing his webbing in uneven jolts as he sped out of the dark maw of the mountain.

A woman made out of _light_ followed him. She lurched forward on writhing tentacles. “Peter!” she shrieked. “Come back! We still have to finish our dance!”

Parker slingshotted himself up to the ceiling, out of her reach. She flailed her tentacle arms after him, but Parker was beyond her reach.

That made the woman slump into a pout. She was all but stamping her feet. Then she noticed Steve and the Skull, and lurched over on her mechanical arms.

“Johann, are you _leaving_?” the woman whined.

“Madame Doctor!” Schmidt growled. “I must get on the _Valkyrie_!” 

“Oh, Johann,” she said. “Of course, I’ll help you. Just give me the Cube.”

“What? No!”

“It won’t help you where you’re going, but it will power my collider,” the woman snarled. “Give me the Cube!”

Schmidt yanked himself away, and raised his gun. That was the last thing the Aryan Skull did.

Because the woman hit him with one of her tentacles, right across the throat, and yanked the Cube container into her arms with another. She was neatly outside the range of the arterial spray as the Skull collapsed.

“Mine now!” she said, and turned back the way she came.

“_**NO!**_” Parker shouted from the ceiling. But it was a horrible, hollow sound that rang all the way through Steve’s body and made his lungs vibrate.

He stared up at his scientist. The man looked hollow. There was something inside him. There was something inside him that was bigger than he was.

Steve could make out bits of it.

_‘A Spider the size of the sky, made out of people’_, Parker had said, all those months ago. That phrase didn’t capture how gruesome the thing was.

“_**YOU. WILL. NOT.**_” 

The woman fled.

Steve followed. Parker did too, and when they hit the tunnel mouth, Parker grabbed Steve and swung him over his shoulder pick-a-back.

“Hold on, Captain!” Parker yelled, and slingshotted them down the corridor. “We have to stop her!”

“She has the Cube!”

“I know! She could turn the planet inside out with that thing!”

Chasing Doc Ock back to her lab was so goddamned _stupid. _Peter did it anyway, speeding through the tunnels with Rogers on his back. They were going to wind up _dead_.

The woman had just gone over the bodies—most of which she’d made—and back to her collider. Whatever soldiers had been guarding it, they weren’t anymore.

Doc Ock had killed them.

She had the control panel open, and was seating the Cube in a slot that fit it just right. Of course she was. No honor among thieves, or collaborators, apparently.

_**NOW, **_the voice in Peter’s head said._** THAT BELONGS ELSEWHERE.**_

“Please shut up,” Peter hissed. It had never talked to him before, not in all the long years since he was made a Spider. Its voice was drilling through his head and making it vibrate, not quite pain, not yet.

_ **NOW.** _

“What the hell?!” Rogers breathed as Doc Ock turned the collider on, blue light shot between the two cylinders. Red joined it, and then yellow, in fountaining bubbles that he remembered all too well.

Doc Ock cackled. “Finally!”

Peter shot silk at her, and yanked.

She shrieked as she was knocked off her feet. 

“You!” she cried and turned on him. Her tentacles were whirling blades.

WHACK!

She staggered back as Rogers flung his shield at her.

Peter would have smiled, but her staggering step took her into the bubbling light, and she _glitched._

The entire collider _glitched._

The enormous room _glitched._

And Captain America, and Peter himself. _Glitch!_

Everything was twitching through possibilities. Peter stepped forward, and watched himself go through the possibilities, every possibility. His hands turned dark, turned pale, wore gloves with red, blue, white, black, pink, had hooves, had claws, on and on.

Rogers too, kept shifting, glitching. He turned colors, all _red-white-blue_, changed to different faces, mostly himself, but Barnes appeared and was gone, and a man much too dark to be Rogers, and then a woman just as dark but tiny, and then Rogers again, and then a woman too tall to be Rogers, and then Rogers again.

Doc Ock shrieked as she stood, twisting, shrinking, growing, always writhing with tentacles, always clawing away from the sucking, bubbling void.

“What do we do!” Rogers yelled, his voice distorting.

“Break it! You go there! I’ll go there!” Peter directed. He struggled over to the control panel.

The Cube was in metal prongs. Peter grabbed it, and felt it burn through him. 

He shrieked. But then, something reached _through_ him and grabbed it.

_ **MINE, NOW.** _

The alien light cut off. 

The Cube was gone, but the collider was still whirring, and the bubbly void still hung in the air. Peter still glitched, but it was slowing.

“You thief!” Doc Ock yelled.

Peter leaped to the ceiling, evading her striking tentacle.

Rogers caught the other striking tentacle on his shield.

Doc Ock cackled, and started to pull Steve in, close to her other tentacles and the buzzsaws at their end.

Peter launched silk at Rogers’ back, and behind him, anchored himself in an insane game of tug-o-war.

Rogers fended off Doc Ock’s attacks while Peter pulled, and pulled, making progress by inches in drawing Rogers to safety.

All the while, the collider whirred, and the bubbly void creeped forward. Doc Ock was obscured by the blobs, but her tentacles still thrashed around Rogers.

“Parker!”

“Hold on!” Peter could feel Rogers’ battle gear giving way, in little jerks of ripped stitches and popped rivets.

Doc Ock was shrieking now, not her cackling laughter, but fear.

“Parker!” Rogers yelled, right as the reinforced battle costume tore away entirely. Peter was thrown off balance, falling straight to the ground as Rogers was yanked off his feet in the other direction, right into Doc Ock.

The void erupted one last time in an explosion, and Peter knew nothing more.

NEWS FLASH: STEVE ROGERS, CAPTAIN AMERICA, KILLED IN RAID ON FINAL HYDRA STRONGHOLD. DETAILS TO FOLLOW


	10. ALL THAT WAS LEFT OF THEM

Dear Miguel,

Please come visit. Peter is finally home now, but he is moody and unhappy, worse than I was after Spain.

I hope that seeing friends who he can talk to will help him. I don’t think I can. Peter won’t let me.

Yours,

Mary

“Peter, we are going out,” Mary told him, and so he got his overcoat on and they went out. Mary steered them onto the train, and Peter stared out the window, looking at nothing in particular. Wherever Mary wanted to go, he was willing, if not terribly interested.

They got off at Coney Island, and walked over to Steeplechase Park, towards the carousel. 

“Doc!”

Peter looked at the man yelling at him, and managed a smile.

“Sergeant Barnes,” he said. “You’re looking well.”

“Thoroughly civilian Mr. Barnes, thanks,” Barnes said. He really did look well. Clean and in civvies, without the rawness of life on the march. Someone had been feeding him up, since he’d put on enough weight not to blow away in the wind.

“Hello, Bucky,” Mary said.

“Hiya, Mary,” Barnes replied. “Let me introduce you. This here is Milly,” he said, shepherding the woman who’d been sitting on the bench beside him with his good hand.

She was short, with the kind of frame that would go to zaftig, but right now she was the kind of thin that said recent and prolonged deprivation. Peter frowned at her, trying to place her, and then subtracted twenty pounds and added a layer of grime, an ill-fitting uniform, and a Soviet rifle.

“Corporal Rozhenko?”

She grinned up at him.

“You’ve met?” Mary asked.

“Mary, may I present to you Corporal Lyudmilla Ivanova Rozhenko, late of Minsk and the Soviet Army, and one of the best sharpshooters I’ve ever witnessed. Corporal, how are you even here?!”

“Call me Milly, please. It is American, now, yes?” 

That didn’t answer the question, but before Peter could press on how Rozhenko was even here, a small horde of teen and almost teen girls clattered off the carousel and besieged Barnes. It turned out they were his sisters, all four of them, and also Rozhenko’s young brother and even younger sister.

“Call me Eugene, yes?” the brother said, though Rozhenko had introduced him as Yevgeny. Peter nodded; he understood the wish to fit in. The sister didn’t say a word, but hid in the group of Bucky’s sisters and eyed him suspiciously.

“Natalia is ...troubled,” Rozhenko said. “Everything was bad, and our mother died during the occupation, and then I decided to come here, and everything is strange.”

“Natalia is just waiting to bite,” Barnes murmured. 

“Yasha.”

“She is. I’ve never seen a kid more suspicious, or more sneaky. Becky says she slinks around school like a stray cat.” Becky being the oldest of Barnes’ many sisters. 

Peter escorted Mary along the boardwalk as they walked with Barnes and… was Rozhenko his fiancée? It seemed so. Apparently, if she wasn’t allowed to carry Barnes off like a war prize into the depths of the Soviet Union, she had decided to come to him. Somehow. Peter could only assume she’d smuggled herself and her siblings out. 

They were living with Barnes and his family for now, but she and Mary were discussing the different apartments that she and Barnes might live in after the wedding.

The cloud of kids dashed ahead of them and back, occasionally asking for nickels for a game or another ride. Mary and Rozhenko wound up standing in line at the concessionaires while Barnes and Peter hung back. Barnes was turning ashen, and Peter wanted to be back a little from the crush.

“You don’t like crowds either, Doc?” Barnes asked as they found a wall to lean against, out of the flow of traffic.

Peter looked at him sideways. 

“Some days I’m fine, but some days my arm aches,” Barnes ran his hand over his left arm, with the prosthesis of hook and claw instead of hand. “And I don’t want to be looked at.”

“Not wanting pity is understandable,” Peter said.

“Bah. Not what I meant and you know it.”

Peter looked away, out towards the beach and the horde of beach-goers. “Yes. I’m told it can get better.”

“I hope so, Doc, I hope so.”

Peter was on a rooftop, just looking out on the city, when he felt his spider sense prickle with recognition. He turned, and stopped.

Miguel looked back at him.

“I didn’t expect to see you…” Peter said, ridiculously.

“Mhlobo…”

Peter turned away.

“Am I not welcome anymore?”

Peter shook his head, and gripped the edge of the rooftop. The night was surprisingly, refreshingly cool, and he was going to blame that on the way his eyes watered.

Miguel stepped up beside him and asked, “Then what the flarking hell is going on, jammit? I don’t—”

Peter twisted and grabbed, pulling Miguel off his feet and into a bear hug.

“Hey. Hey. It’s all right…?” Miguel said uncertainly.

“Just shut up, mhlobo.”

“Yeah, okay, I can do that…”

Peter snorted, and then sniffled, and then sobbed.

_You are cordially invited to the wedding of JAMES BUCHANNAN BARNES and LYUDMILLA IVANOVNA ROZHENKO at St. Michael's Russian Catholic Church of the Byzantine Rite, at 1 pm, 26 August 1946._

_RSVP_

Barnes and Rozhenko looked so happy that Peter didn’t even mind too much that the inside of the church was gaudy enough to give him a headache just from all the light glittering off the gilt. It didn’t help that the wedding service was extremely long, to the point where Aunt May was looking wilted and even Mary was shifting like her feet hurt.

Also, the wedding was entirely in Church Slavonic, so Peter had no idea where they were at any point in time. Barnes’ family didn’t seem much better, but at least some of them had been briefed, because they reacted to things he wasn’t getting and didn’t stumble quite so badly through the ceremony.

But eventually it was over and they wound up in a rented private room at a restaurant that seemed to have a bottomless well of meat dumplings, tea strong enough it could bite you, and beet soup.

At least the band knew how to play, though he could do with less Guy Lombardo covers. Mary danced with him several rounds, Aunt May twice through more stately, waltz-like turns, and once with Rozhenko, who was flushed and happy and reclaimed Barnes from one of his smaller sisters.

“You seems happy,” Mary said, once things wound down and they gathered their coats to go home.

“You know, I think I am,” he said back. “It was a good day today.”

“I’m glad,” Mary said, and squeezed his elbow where she’d had her hand tucked into his arm.

Peter turned to Aunt May, walking on his other side. The air was actually clear, for once. A light rain earlier had misted the air, and the coal dust was cleared away for a change.

“It’s fine, dear. I’m just tired,” Aunt May said. “It was a lovely wedding, though. Wasn’t it?”

“It was swell.”

They walked home, the long blocks eaten up in the dark. The house was chill, when they got in, but Peter went down to stoke the furnace. When he came up, Mary was fixing a nightcap for them both.

“Aunt May went to bed. I think the wedding took more out of her than she wanted to admit.”

Peter nodded. She had looked a little ashy on the way home. If he didn’t know she’d never accept, he’d have insisted on a cab and damn the expense. “Still, I think she enjoyed it. She likes weddings.”

“She even liked ours,” Mary smiled.

_“Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.” St. Mark V_

_May the Lord have mercy on the soul of_

_MAY (REILLY) PARKER_

_Died, August 28, 1946_

_Mrs. May Parker (nee Reilly). Widow of Benjamin Peter Parker. Founder and Chairwoman of the Bowery Welfare Center. Beloved Aunt of Peter Parker (Mary), Rev. Michael Reilly SJ, George Reilly (Stella), Kay Reilly Halloran (Michael), Thomas Reilly, Eugenia Reilly Kowalski (Raymond), Sadie Reilly, John Anderson, Sara Anderson Gunnarson (Olav), and Aurelia Muck passed out this world and into the arms of the Lord, August 28, 1946. Funeral mass will be held at St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral, noon, August 31._


	11. FOR HE TORE ITS CHORDS ASUNDER

Dear Peni,

Thank you for coming to the funeral and for the incense. I haven’t burned any of it, but just the scent of it in the box is very calming.

Peter

Miguel was making sandwiches again. Cheese and deli meat sandwiches that would have been astronomically expensive at home, but were considered plain here, even with mustard on them. He’d love some garlic aioli to add, but it wasn’t something available and he was not going to make it from scratch. It wasn’t a good use of his time.

Peter was sitting at the table, swirling a glass of tinted liquor — probably that terrible whiskey he liked — in his hand.

The doorbell went off, a loud _bing bong_ sound that never failed to make Miguel pause.

"I’ll get it,” Mary called.

After a few moments, Mary called in a strained voice, “Peter, there are some men here who say they have business with you.”

Miguel looked at Peter, confused. He still had a black armband on his suit jacket. Wasn’t it considered crass to try talking business with someone still in mourning in this dimension? Shouldn’t they wait until a month had gone by? Two weeks, at the very least.

Miguel followed Peter into the front room. There were four men in suits standing there. One had Mary by the arm. Miguel stepped forward, but Peter put a hand across his chest, barring him.

“Peter Benjamin Parker?”

Peter nodded his head

“And you?”

“Miguel O’Hara,” Miguel said. His name was useless to them. They might find another Miguel O’Hara in this New York, but it definitely wouldn’t be him.

“Mr. Parker, I’m Special Agent Bryson of the FBI. These are Agents Fleming, Brown, and Caldecott.”

“What’s this all about, Agent?” Peter asked, in that slow way that said he was sitting on his anger.

“Parker, I’m placing you under arrest under suspicion of espionage.”

“WHAT?” Mary shouted, and tried to lunge away from the agent holding her.

“Excuse me?” Miguel said, completely at sea.

“To wit, passing restricted information to the agents of the Soviet Union, to the detriment of the United States.”

Peter glowered. “Really? The Soviet Union? That’s what you’re going with?”

“You were at a wedding ten days ago,” one of the men, maybe Caldecott said. “Lots of commies there.”

“Lots of Russian emigres. Sgt. Barnes’ bride is from Minsk. She wanted something familiar for her wedding.”

“Damned commie-lover,” a different one of the backup goons said. The one who had Mary still hadn’t spoken.

“He was Captain America’s top sergeant during the war,” Peter said.

“Still a damned commie-lover. He spent weeks with the Soviets!”

“We fell off a mountain,” Peter said, in the patient dictation of someone talking to a small child. Or an idiot. “If that Soviet unit didn’t stumble upon us, we’d have frozen to death.”

"My husband is a war hero," Mary snapped. "What right do you have to—"

"Shut up," said Bryson, not even looking in Mary's direction; Miguel felt his claws twitch at the casual contempt. "Parker, you're coming with us. Now."

“It’s all right, sweetheart,” Peter said. “I’ll go quietly.”

He made a step forward, rolling his arms up as if to proffer them for cuffs, and then stopped abruptly, every inch tense. Miguel knew that look, knew what it meant: _Warning. Danger._ This was about to go bad—

Peter dropped suddenly, spinning into a leg sweep that knocked two of the men off their feet. There was a gun abruptly in Miguel's face; he crumpled it and sent its owner flying. It all took only seconds, the screaming and chaos and action.

“—Mary!” Peter whispered.

Miguel spun. The agents were all tossed into various walls, slumped and stunned, and covered in his webbing and Peter’s

And Mary was leaning against the doorway, her hand clutching her side, and black dripping out between her fingers.

“Oh no…”

“Peter, it hurts,” Mary cried and slumped into his arms as he caught her.

“We have to get her—” _to a hospital_, Miguel didn’t say. The local hospitals were terrible, and would they even treat her if her husband was arrested? Miguel didn’t like the odds.

“Peni’s,” Peter said. “We go to Peni’s.”

“All right,” Miguel said. He began fiddling with his gizmo. “What about them?”

“They can get fucked,” Peter growled. “They _shot my wife!”_

Miguel couldn’t argue with that, so he didn’t. He twisted his gizmo again, and a hole opened up.

“What is that?!” Agent Bryson cried.

“Someplace you can’t get to,” Peter snarled, and jumped through.

Miguel smiled at the agent, showing his fangs as he followed, “See you never, Agent!”

Peter ate the food Miguel put in front of him, and tried to stop shaking. His spider-sense hadn’t warned him in time. Every risk he’d ever taken had been his risk to take. Not Mary’s. 

“I don’t think you can go back,” Miguel said, as he picked at his own food. It was some kind of thick buckwheat noodles and mushroom and citrus soup, as far as Peter could tell. It was far from the weirdest thing Miguel had ever set in front of him with the expectation of him eating it; the first time Miguel had placed a roasted guinea pig on the table with pride and flourish was still the top there.

“We assaulted four g-men and escaped arrest,” Peter said.

“And made our escape into a different universe, in full view of said men,” Miguel agreed.

“I was being arrested for being a Soviet spy!”

“I noticed.”

Peter hung his head. 

“Mary will be fine. I already got an update from medical. She’s in recovery. We can see her in the morning.”

That made Peter look up, his eyes wet with unshed tears. Miguel scooted across the bench to wrap Peter in his arms.

The sobs were loud, ugly things, full of grief and snot. Miguel endured, because he loved Peter, and Mary too. Peter was grateful for that, but also guilty.

“This is my fault.”

“You didn’t shoot Mary,” Miguel said, in an attempt to sooth. “You didn’t even pull a gun. Those bitheads did.”

Peter pulled back, and rubbed his eyes clear. 

“Miguel… I didn’t work for the Soviets.”

“I know.”

“But…”

Miguel’s eyebrows rose.

Peter winced, and bit the bullet, “I kind of blew up a ratline.”

Miguel frowed, and glance side to side. “A what?”

“Operation Paperclip. That’s what it’s called, as far as I can tell.”

Miguel made a ‘tell me more gesture’.

“Someone in the government was smuggling Nazi scientists to the States. Mostly the rocket guys, people they wanted out of Soviet hands. They were using the Catholic Church to help.”

Miguel sucked in a hiss. “Shock!”

“I was gritting my teeth and saying it was necessary politics, until I saw Zola’s name on a list.”

“Hydra?” 

“Hydra.”

“What kind of flarking, shocking bithead was letting Hydra into your country?!”

Peter shook his head. “Fools who think they can ride that tiger. I wasn’t going to have it. So I told some people, who told some other people, and the information got to where it needed to get to.”

“Soviets?’

“The Yishuv,” he said. At Miguel’s blank look. “In the Palestine Mandate.”

“... are you telling me you told the _Israelis?!”_ Miguel barked.

“It’s not Israel yet,” Peter said. He knew that there was a country of Israel in the other Spiders’ dimensions, but it hadn’t happened for his. Not yet, and maybe not ever. Things were different across the dimensions, after all.

“You told the Israelis about a Nazi-smuggling operation,” Miguel cackled. “Shock, Peter, that took sibindi.”

Peter frowned at him. “Sibindi?”

“Uhm, nerve and courage and daring? It’s a word from Wakandan.”

“Like ‘mhlobo’?”

“Yeah, like that. Mhlobo, you have sibindi.” Miguel chuckled.

To Lyla:

Lyla, check the availability of mid-century housing stock. Find me options with three bedrooms at least, workshop space, a hobbyist kitchen, and at least a tenth of a hectare greenspace. Things have changed abruptly, and we need more room. It can be midtown, but no lower than the 12th story. Make sure it has security infrastructure robust enough for you, too.

Miguel


	12. EPILOGUE: THE ROAD GOES EVER ON

“Here we are,” Miguel said proudly as the door slid open. 

Mary only squeaked as Peter picked her up and carried her inside, depositing her gently on a couch spanning the whole of a picture window. Yes, she was still shaky on her feet, but not _that _shaky.

“Nice, huh?” Miguel said as he closed the door behind him.

“Miguel, this entire building looks like a bunch of shoeboxes stacked on top of one another,” Mary pointed out.

“It’s a classic twencen design!” Miguel gestured around the apartment. “I ordered repro furniture to match!”

Mary glanced around the sparsely furnished room. There were a few — well, they were probably meant to be chairs, all low arms and curved oval frames. She and Miguel might fit in them, but Peter was going to have his knees hitting his chin if he tried.

“Looks like there’s enough space,” Peter murmured to Mary, and kissed her cheek. Then he turned to Miguel with a grin. “We could even put your coffin right over there,” he gestured towards a less sunny spot near the kitchen.

Miguel frowned, and bit his lip in a frankly adorable pout, showing his fangs.

“What?” MJ said, suddenly at sea. There was an air of an old joke that she wasn’t getting, and by Peter’s cat-faced smirk, one that he used to tease Miguel mercilessly.

“Oh no,” Miguel snapped. “Don’t you d—”

“Miguel, I can’t believe you! All those visits and you never told her—“

“—I will wrap you in packing tape if you finish that sentence—“

“—that you’re a vamp—ack!” Peter yelped as Miguel lunged at him.

Mary watched in alarm, then amusement, then outright glee as Miguel descended into chasing Peter all around the room, including up and down the walls as Peter cackled in glee.

Finally, Miguel boxed Peter between the kitchen table and the wall.

“Gotcha!”

Peter, not to be trapped against his will, jumped over the table, and funny not-quite-bartop. He yelled “Have at you!” like an Errol Flynn character, and tackled Miguel before grinning and dashing off again.

Miguel squawked at this sudden veer into piracy, and Mary just laughed and laughed. She hasn’t laughed like that in forever, and oh, it felt good.

She was home, with her husband and whatever Miguel finally turned out to be, and it was good.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Letters from the Spider-Verse (Cover Art)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20839856) by [StarHost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarHost/pseuds/StarHost)


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